Not only is the right to be represented by a lawyer enshrined in the law of the land, but defendants must also have an able and willing attorney. A person who has not been capably defended has grounds for a retrial in many cases.
To summarize, it is a major issue when this most fundamental right is threatened.
The forces hard at work to strip your Second Amendment rights away have precious little regard for the Sixth as well. There is now a movement among anti-gun zealots to remove access to legal counsel from the very industry that upholds the right to keep and bear arms.
Two gun control groups are trolling university campuses and extracting pledges from law students to never provide legal representation to the gun industry or its interests in court.
Giffords, the gun control outfit led by former U.S. Rep. Gabby Giffords, and March for Our Lives, funded by anti-Second Amendment billionaire Michael Bloomberg, are hard at work. They are targeting law students across the U.S. to promise to never use their practice to uphold gun rights.
This, of course, is based on the misguided notion that somehow the firearms industry is responsible for violent crime in the U.S.
Never mind that our ancestors were also armed, and at younger ages than presently allowed. The violent crime sweeping the nation in 2023 did not exist anywhere close to the rate that it does today, but somehow, it’s the fault of the inanimate object.
These groups are not extracting promises to deny legal representation to murderers, rapists, and other violent criminals. That would be unthinkable in the system we live under.
No, they are instead targeting a perfectly legal and constitutionally protected industry and avoiding blame to those who carry out these acts.
One of the actors peddling false claims for the Giffords group is David Pucino, the deputy chief counsel. He promoted the pledge by asserting that weapons are the leading cause of death for children in the U.S., which is demonstrably false.
The assertion relied on data from the University of Michigan, but those figures were altered to reach a new conclusion. Under the law of the land, 18- and 19-year-olds are legal adults enjoying nearly all the rights and privileges that status affords.
Recognizing this fact, previous studies confirmed that the largest percentage of American children’s deaths come from vehicle accidents. But that outcome did not fit the narrative, so new studies were done to include this adult age group.
Now the anti-gun lobby is touting this as the gospel truth.
The Giffords pledge website also trumpets the easily debunked claim that the weapons industry works against “any effort to pass gun safety laws.” The simple fact is that the gun industry is the leader in gun safety efforts across the nation. There is no one working harder to keep guns out of hands they don’t belong in than firearms manufacturers.
For example, the National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF) actively supported the FIX NICS Act. This was designed to ensure that every state submits disqualifying records into the FBI’s National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS).
Through NSSF’s ongoing efforts, 16 states and Congress revamped the system to keep firearms away from the wrong people.
Further, it is this same industry that spearheads the push for safe storage and sensible measures to keep guns from falling into the hands of children.
Apparently, that’s not enough for Pucino, who claimed the weapons industry consists of “some really reprehensible companies that have done some horrible things.”
What is reprehensible is that gun control zealots are attempting to remove yet another fundamental constitutional protection from a legal industry. This is energy that would be better spent pursuing pledges to keep violent criminals off the streets and ensure that Americans may freely exercise their right to self-defense.
