Opinion: In wake of Trayvon killing, rethinking gun laws [View all]

[jpak]

http://www.northjersey.com/news/opinions/op-ed/gunlaws_042212.html

Will Americans leery of a decade of gun rights expansions stand their ground over the Trayvon Martin case?

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“At some point, the progressives have got to stand their ground against the NRA,” says Philip Cook, a sociologist who studies gun policy and crime at Duke University, in Durham, N.C. “I think otherwise the NRA will continue to push for a broader interpretation of their understanding of what the Second Amendment right is, to the point where everybody pretty much can carry a gun, concealed or openly, all the time in any circumstance, and do with it what they want.”

Evidence suggests that this could be such a moment.

More so than the shooting of Congresswoman Gabby Giffords last year in Tucson by a mentally disturbed man, the Martin case has provided ammunition for gun control groups largely because it so starkly touches on two of the major gun rights pillars: the expansion of self-defense doctrine into public spaces, and the growth of concealed weapons laws, especially so-called “shall issue” laws that require states to give concealed weapons permits to applicants who meet standard requirements.

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