JFK, the NRA, & Heller – Three Degrees Of Separation

JFK, the NRA, & Heller – Three Degrees Of Separation
By John Snyder

Arlington, VA – In front of the JFK bust at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, DC, John Snyder talks with Dick Heller about NRA support for Heller’s Second Amendment challenge to DC gun control, noting that Kennedy was an NRA Life Member.

“There is a deep connection between the memory of President John F. Kennedy, the National Rifle Association, and Richard Heller’s Second Amendment court challenges to District of Columbia firearms control,” gun law expert John M. Snyder noted here today.

“Few people realize it, but our late president was a Life Member of the NRA,” said Snyder, named the Gun Dean by Human Events. “As a matter of fact, Kennedy was featured prominently firing a shotgun in the 1966 United States Information Agency film, ‘Years of Lightning, Day of Drums.'”

“Today,” continued Snyder, “the NRA supports Dick Heller’s second challenge to District of Columbia gun control law on Second Amendment grounds. Dick first challenged the DC ban on private handgun possession in a case supported by philanthropist Bob Levy. In its 2008 District of Columbia v. Heller decision, the U.S. Supreme Court accepted the arguments of attorney Alan Gura and ruled the DC law unconstitutional as a violation of individual Second Amendment gun rights.

“Subsequently, the DC government enacted a gun control statute continuing to mandate firearms registration as a condition of gun ownership. It imposed severe requirements as preconditions for registration. It is that statute which Heller now is challenging with NRA support in the case of Heller v. District of Columbia, known as Heller Two.. Now it’s in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit. His attorneys Stephen Halbrook and Richard Gardiner maintain that a registration requirement for possession violates the fundamental right to bear arms of the Second Amendment as elucidated by the Supreme Court in Heller One.”

“There it is,” said Snyder. “There truly is a connection between JFK, NRA and Heller’s Second Amendment challenge to DC gun control.”

www.GunRightsPolicies.org

About John Snyder:
Named the Gun Dean by Human Events, “the senior rights activist in Washington” by Shotgun News, a “champion of the right to self-defense” by The Washington Times, and “dean of gun lobbyists” by The Washington Post and The New York Times, John M. Snyder has spent 45 years as a proponent of the individual Second Amendment civil right to keep and bear arms as a National Rifle Association editor, public affairs director of the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms, treasurer of the Second Amendment Foundation, and founder of www.GunRightsPolicies.org.

A former Jesuit seminarian, Snyder is founder/manager of Telum Associates, LL.C., founder/chairman of the St. Gabriel Possenti Society, Inc., a director of Council for America, and serves on the boards of the National Association of Chiefs of Police and the American Federation of Police & Concerned Citizens. He is also the author of the book Gun Saint. Visit: www.GunRightsPolicies.org