Largest Gun Study Ever: More Guns, More Murder

[CTyankee]

42. I have been in this movement going back to the Vietnam Era and gun safety was an issue then

just as it is an issue now, right alongside of peace, economic and social justice. They were all of one piece and grew out of one large movement that took shape because of MLK, Jr. and civil rights. You call it "ridiculous" but that is your re-interpretation of what was really going on. I can understand why it is your "slant" on things that happened then. Only it didn't happen that way. You are trying to rewrite history to fit your narrative, but I am old enough and lived and worked through it and I can tell you that you are wrong.

back with an edit to add: in the 1970s I was a staffer at the ACLU's Washington office and worked with the National Council to Control Handguns (which later, after my involvement, became the Brady campaign). At the time a pro gun advocate was trying to rally the national board of directors of the ACLU to take a pro-gun stand. A representative from the NCCH and the pro-gun advocate both made their cases before the board at one of their regular meetings. The board voted on the side of the NCCH. I was present during the debate and vote since I supervised two law students who were official note-takers and I think those notes, developed into a narrative, are available from the ACLU archives. Since the Vietnam War had wound down, our office was involved in a number of issues such as wiretapping in the name of national security (Halperin's case against Nixon), amnesty for war protestors, women's rights (with Ruth Bader Ginsberg as general counsel to the Women's Right Project of the ACLU) and capital punishment. Aryeh Neier was the Executive Director and Norman Dorsen was the Board Chair during this time. John H.F. Shattuck was Washington office Director and my boss (later appointed ambassador to the former Czechoslovakia by Pres. Clinton).

All of this of course was way before the Heller decision, and even before the Brady shooting. I went on to work with the national office of the League of Women Voters on the ERA campaign but that organization, too, had an official public policy stand firmly endorsing gun safety.