Second Amendment

The Second Amendment clearly protects the right of individuals to keep and bear firearms.
When Mr. Ashcroft said that, he also said the 20,000 or so existing laws did not infringe that right.
I agree that The Second Amendment clearly protects the right of individuals. But in my opinion, many existing laws do infringe the Second Amendment. Specifically:
New York's Sullivan Law, and
Pataki's mis-named "assault weapon ban".
These laws are unconstitutional.

The Sullivan Law- Protecting muggers since 1911.
I’ve always been incensed that New York gets away with requiring a permit for exercising a constitutional right, but The Sullivan Law, which created New York's pistol licensing scheme, had several things to going for it:
1. Sullivan represented a dock district, and many of his constituents were muggers. Sullivan himself was leader of a notorious Irish gang. The criminal work of Sullivan's constituents was impeded by the fact that citizens were arming themselves before going to his bad neighborhood, thereby making robbery a dangerous business. Sullivan wanted to protect his criminal constituents from armed victims, and his law has made New York safe for robbers ever since.
2. Tammany Hall wanted to disarm Italians and blacks. The law served the same racist purposes that gun control served in Dixie: to disarm disfavored races. That’s why the pistol-licensing agent (who Sullivan controlled) has unbridled discretion to discriminate under the Sullivan Law.
3. Tammany Hall wanted to be able to arrest political opponents. The Sullivan Law gave Tammany another excuse to arrest people.
4. Sullivan was crazy anyway, and soon was committed to an insane asylum. He died a suicide. The law is as insane as he was.

The Sullivan law is now administered to deny all but a select few the right to bear arms in many New York jurisdictions. It is unconstitutional as written and as applied.

The Ban
Pataki's ban is aimed at the very type of gun that the Second Amendment is most intended to protect: guns that are particularly useful for self-defense, and for defense of country, from:
criminals,
foreign invaders, and
domestic tyrants.
The Colonists started the American Revolution, not when the taxes were imposed without representation, but when the British Army tried to confiscate the military style muskets with bayonet lugs.