Political Quotes

“I rise today to talk about gun ownership and gun safety in Virginia and in the United States. I speak as a gun owner, and I speak as a strong Second Amendment supporter. I want to do a couple of things in this speech, but one thing I want to do is put to rest the idea that gun owners, gun ownership, and the Second Amendment are incompatible with reasonable gun safety rules. I accept the ruling, the holding, and the principle announced by the Supreme Court in the Heller decision that the Second Amendment conveys an individual right to bear arms and conveys that right to the American public. There was, and there remains, some controversy over the ruling. Some have argued that the text of the amendment discusses only the right to bear arms in the context of participating in a militia, which in 1787 was a necessary strategy for defending the Nation during a time when we had no standing Army. For years, many scholars and courts accepted that notion and argued that the Second Amendment was sort of different from the others in that way. In Heller, the Supreme Court ruled that the Second Amendment, like all the other amendments, conveys an individual right, and I accept and believe that interpretation. But the Heller decision came with an important caveat.…”