By The Lima News - 3/18/2013
Although his name is on a landmark Second Amendment Supreme Court ruling firmly establishing people have the right to have a gun in their home, Dick Heller said Friday the fight is far from over.
Politicians and power-hungry people are constantly trying to come up with ways to take away a person's right own a gun and the right to self protection, something every citizen should guard against, he said.
Heller spoke at Ohio Northern University to a mostly pro-Second Amendment group about his 15-year battle to overturn Washington D.C.'s gun ban outlawing a functioning and loaded gun in the home. Heller lived across from a crime-plagued apartment complex where shootings often occurred, sometimes with bullets shot into his home. He wanted a gun for self protection and took a stand against the gun ban.
The case made it to the U.S. Supreme Court which ruled in favor of Heller.
Heller said anyone who does not question politicians and government officials' attempts to ban handguns, at minimum do not understand history and at worst, are not very intelligent.
History has shown controlling leaders of countries first disarm its citizens.
"What it is people who are ignorant and refuse to study history," he said.
Heller said law-abiding citizens with guns lower crime.
"Look at Chicago that has the most stringent laws, and look at D.C. which had the most stringent laws before and was called the murder capital. Why is it the cities with the most stringent regulations end up with the highest killing rate?" he said.
Heller does not support any of the recently proposed gun control measures that followed a school shooting last year in Connecticut. The measure with the best chance of making it out of the Senate, called Universal Background checks, he said is a dangerous notion.
It creates registration, which leads to confiscation, he said.
He said the proposed "assault weapons" ban is nothing more than politicians like President Barack Obama and Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., using a school shooting tragedy to try to promote their political agenda while emotions are high.
"Dianne Feinstein wants to take away my gun, but she's a concealed carry holder. That woman is a hypocrite and that term does not phase her in the least. How can you talk to an idiot?" he said.
Heller said all rifles combined are used in less than 3 percent of crimes, and a subset of that is what antigun politicians try to demonize by calling the weapons "assault weapons."
But the antigun politicians will not go after handguns, which are the majority of guns used in crimes, because they would have an even harder fight. Instead, they start small and try to win by chipping away, he said.
He cautioned people on believing any statistics they hear from those pushing gun-control legislation. He urged people to do research themselves.
Gun laws disarm law-abiding citizens and give criminals an advantage, he said.
Heller said citizens need to fight every effort that tries to make gun ownership harder, such as any restriction or requirement on handguns, including some as wild as banning guns based on color or appearance.
"In his own words, the mayor of Chicago said the police oversight of gun ownership is designed to harass law-abiding citizens with stress and have the capability for the eventual seizure of all guns," he said.
(c)2013 The Lima News (Lima, Ohio)
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