louise langevin's List: Henry David Thoreau Essay #2

• The Washington Times shows no discernible correlation between stricter rules and lower gun-crime rates in the states.
• For example, New York, even before it approved the strictest gun-control measures in the country last week, was ranked fourth among the states in strength of gun laws by the Brady Campaign to End Gun Violence, but was also in the top 10 in firearm homicide rates in 2011, according to the FBI.
• eanwhile, North Dakota was near the bottom in its firearm homicide, firearm robbery and firearm assault rates, but also had some of the loosest gun laws

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• In District of Columbia v. Heller (2008)
• econd Amendment extends, prima facie, to all instruments that constitute bearable arms, even those that were not in existence at the time of the founding.” The same would certainly hold true for modern firearm parts, such as magazines.
• The Court also said that the Second Amendment protects the right to keep and bear arms that are “in common use,”

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• The Magazine Limit of 1994-2004 Didn’t Reduce Crime
• W]e found no statistical evidence of post-ban decreases in either the number of victims per gun homicide incident, the number of gunshot wounds per victim, or the proportion of gunshot victims with multiple wounds. Nor did we find assault weapons to be overrepresented in a sample of mass murders involving guns.”

• Among his suggested initiatives are universal background checks for gun sales, the reinstatement and strengthening of the assault weapons ban, limiting ammunition magazines to a 10-round capacity, providing schools with resource officers and counselors, putting more police officers on the streets, establishing stronger punishments for gun trafficking, and offering more comprehensive insurance coverage for mental health.

• In the United States, the history of abortion goes back much farther than the 1973 Supreme Court case Roe v. Wade, which made abortion legal and marked an important turning point in public health policy.
• . They wanted to prevent "untrained" practitioners, including midwives, apothecaries, and homeopaths, from competing with them for patients and for patient fees.
• Between 1967 and 1973 one-third of the states liberalized or repealed their criminal abortion laws
• The 1973 Supreme Court decision in Roe v. Wade made it possible for women to get safe, legal abortions from well-trained medical practitioners. This led to dramatic decreases in pregnancy-related injury and death.

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• State law and/or constitutional provision limits marriage to relationships between a man and a woman (30 states with
• constitutional provisions and a further seven states with statutory provisions):
   
    Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, California*, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Michigan, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Virginia, West Virginia, Wisconsin, Wyoming
• tate legislatures have been deeply involved in the public debates about how to define marriage and whether the official recognition of “marriage” should be limited to relationships involving one man and one woman or that same-sex couples should also be entitled to “marriage.” State legislatures have gone both ways in this debate: either enacting “defense of marriage” laws and constitutional provisions or, going the opposite direction, adopting laws allowing same sex marriage. Six states have adopted civil unions for same-sex couples that provide the same legal rights as marriage.

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• In the Prop 8 case, same-sex marriage advocates want federal law to override the state approach, arguing that the US Constitution prevents California from discriminating against gay and lesbian citizens who wish to marry
•  In the DOMA case, same-sex marriage advocates want the feds to butt out, arguing (in part) that Congress shouldn’t interfere with state authority by limiting the legal effect of marriages performed according to state law
• Joining with same-sex marriage advocates, the Justice Department has advanced the other constitutional argument that would resolve both cases on the same grounds: that both DOMA and Prop 8 violate the Constitution’s essential promise to treat all citizens equally before the law.
• both laws violate the Equal Protection Clause of the 5th and 14th Amendments, because there is no legitimate basis for the federal or state governments to discriminate between heterosexual and homosexual couples who wish to marry.

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