WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report)—As the national conversation about guns enters its fifth month, the National Rifle Association C.E.O. Wayne LaPierre gave it his seal of approval today, saying that he hopes the conversation continues “forever.” Continue reading: http://nyr.kr/102qIWW

“The scale of the defeat suffered by the ban’s supporters is shocking. This wasn’t a close call; it was a body blow.”

Alex Koppelman on the N.R.A.’s win on assault weapons: http://nyr.kr/10ieVpQ

Photograph by T. J. Kirkpatrick/Getty.

WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report)—In what he called “the happiest day of my life,” National Rifle Association C.E.O. Wayne LaPierre marked Valentine’s Day by marrying his longtime gun, an AK-47 assault rifle. Continue reading: http://nyr.kr/12FXFZy

PYONGYANG (The Borowitz Report)—Kim Jong-un, Supreme Leader of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, has issued the following letter to the citizens of the world:

Dear World People:

For decades, North Korea was threatened by hostile foes with nuclear weapons. With our safety constantly at risk from violent intruders, we asked: How can we possibly defend ourselves? In the immortal words of my Dad, the glorious Kim Jong-il: “The only thing that stops a bad guy with a nuke is a good guy with a nuke.”

…today I am founding the Nuclear Retaliation Association to defend the sovereign right of every nation on the planet to engulf that planet in a hellish inferno.

Continue reading: http://nyr.kr/XM3mnz

WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report)—In testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee today, National Rifle Association C.E.O. Wayne LaPierre warned that the N.R.A. would vigorously oppose any legislation that “limits the sale, purchase, or ownership of politicians.” Continue reading: http://nyr.kr/TWxfog

Alex Koppelman on the limits of what Biden’s task force will be able to accomplish: http://nyr.kr/ZPrASm

Photograph by Mark Wilson/Getty.

(Source: newyorker.com)

Cartoon of the day. For more cartoons from this week’s issue: http://nyr.kr/IipU6f

(Source: newyorker.com)

Trayvon Martin and America’s Gun Laws

The National Rifle Association was founded in 1871 by two men, a lawyer and a former reporter from the New York Times. For most of its history, the N.R.A. was chiefly a sporting and hunting association. To the extent that the N.R.A. had a political arm, it opposed some gun-control measures and supported many others, lobbying for new state laws in the nineteen-twenties and thirties, which introduced waiting periods for handgun buyers and required permits for anyone wishing to carry a concealed weapon. It also supported the 1934 National Firearms Act—the first major federal gun-control legislation—and the 1938 Federal Firearms Act, which together created a licensing system for dealers and prohibitively taxed the private ownership of automatic weapons (“machine guns”). The constitutionality of the 1934 act was upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1939, in U.S. v. Miller, in which Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s solicitor general, Robert H. Jackson, argued that the Second Amendment is “restricted to the keeping and bearing of arms by the people collectively for their common defense and security.” Furthermore, Jackson said, the language of the amendment makes clear that the right “is not one which may be utilized for private purposes but only one which exists where the arms are borne in the militia or some other military organization provided for by law and intended for the protection of the state.” The Court agreed, unanimously. In 1957, when the N.R.A. moved into new headquarters, its motto, at the building’s entrance, read, “Firearms Safety Education, Marksmanship Training, Shooting for Recreation.” It didn’t say anything about freedom, or self-defense, or rights.