The quote of the day is the interview with Chief Justice Warren Burger.
CONVERSATION: CHIEF JUSTICE WARREN BURGER - Dec. 16, 1991
From MacNeil/Lehrer News Hour
MS. HUNTER-GAULT: Some scholars have argued that the Bill of Rights is
still flawed, that some of its provisions need reconsidering, that it's
over rated. How do you respond to that?
JUSTICE BURGER: That is as with anything in this life, it could be better here or there.
MS. HUNTER-GAULT: Like where, for example?
JUSTICE BURGER: Well, that's a harder one to answer. If I were writing
the Bill of Rights now there wouldn't be any such thing as the Second
Amendment.
MS. HUNTER-GAULT: Which says.
JUSTICE BURGER:
That says a well regulated militia being necessary for the defense of
the state, people's rights to bear arms. This has been the subject of
one of the greatest pieces of fraud, I repeat the word "fraud," on the
American public by special interest groups that I have ever seen in my
lifetime. Now just look at those words. There are only three lines to
that amendment. A well regulated militia -- if the militia, which was
going to be the state army, was going to be well regulated, why
shouldn't 16 and 17 and 18 or any other age persons be regulated in the
use of arms the way an automobile is regulated? It's got to be
registered, that you can't just deal with it at will. Someone asked me
recently if I was for or against a bill that was pending in Congress
calling for five days' waiting period. And I said, yes, I'm very much
against it, it should be thirty days' waiting period so they find out
why this person needs a handgun or a machine gun.
MS.
HUNTER-GAULT: What about the opinion polls, finally, that suggest that
the Bill of Rights would not be popularly supported if it were up for
ratification today?
JUSTICE BURGER: I don't believe that at all. I
don't believe that at all. In fact, I think it's a little bit
ridiculous. Any poll can be manipulated by how the question is asked and
if you ask some active member of the NRA if the Second Amendment should
be changed, of course, he or she would go up in the air.
MS. HUNTER-GAULT: That's the National Rifle Association.
JUSTICE BURGER: Yes. I don't want to get sued for slander, but I repeat
that they have misled the American people and they, I regret to say,
they have had far too much influence on the Congress of the United
States than as a citizen I would like to see -- and I am a gun man. I
have guns. I've been a hunter ever since I was a boy.