Sugar, We’re Going Down
Sorry about the lack of posts, things have been busy with Chi 3’s wedding and all the family that’s over right now.
Just making a quick post here at work about the fact that the Supreme Court decided today that the Second Amendment guarantees individuals the right to bear arms. While I have no doubt this will be a very unpopular decision, especially with my more liberal friends, I believe it is the right decision.
The Second Amendment was written because the English tried to take away the guns of the colonists a little before the Revolution, in order to keep them from acting up. The Framers realized that in order to keep our government honest, the threat of insurrection is necessary.
Now, the big argument for limitations on firearms is the danger the pose to “ordinary citizens.” I find this argument lacking for a couple of reasons. First, criminals will still find ways to get guns, even if they are banned. Look at Prohibition speakeasies, and how easy it is to make or get your hands on a Saturday night special. Criminals in Japan and Great Britain, which have nation-wide bans, manage to get guns, too. Things won’t be different here. Second, firearm accidents in the home are not the guns’ fault, they are the owners’ fault. Switzerland has more guns per capita than America, but they have much lower crime AND accidental discharge rates than us. A big part of this is the mandatory military service over there, which familiarizes the male population with guns and gun safety.
Instead of blaming the tools, we need to think about the training we give to the users. In America, when you buy a gun, assuming you pass the background check, the extent of the training you receive on your new gun is maybe a pamphlet or a short speech from your seller. Similarly, America is probably the easiest country in which to obtain a driver’s license, and we have the worst drivers and the most accidents. Does that mean we should ban cars? Maybe only the big ones that can do the most damage? Or maybe we should be a little more sensible, and require stricter tests to get licensed.
tim wrote:
California’s nice liberal gun laws require you to have a valid Handgun Safety Certificate, renewed every 5 years, to purchase a handgun. I suppose they’re mostly “common sense” for someone like you or me, that might necessarily be the case for the rest of Californians. It’s about 35 questions, and I answered all of them correctly after reading the California Dept. of Justice’s study manual while on the car ride to take the test.
Once you have the HSC, you still need to demonstrate to the handgun dealer that you can safely handle the handgun (i.e. they will load a magazine in the pistol, rack the slide, remove the magazine and ask you if it’s safely unloaded…[which it isn't].)
The rest of America requires no such thing, and the HSC is widely unpopular in California because it’s another way for the gov. to track you. Also, nothing similar exists at all for long arms purchases (rifles, shotguns.)
We require hunting licenses but AFAIK they’re just written tests, while other countries (i think Canada is one) requires you to actually hit a target with reasonable accuracy.
I am strongly against gun registration (and I am living in the only state that requires it =/) but I agree with stricter tests for hunting licenses, and demonstration of safe handling for gun purchases (FYI there are no “licenses” for gun ownership, the HSC only says you’re certified to safely handle a handgun, each and every time you purchase a handgun/shotgun/rifle/whatever you run through a DOJ background check)
Posted on 26-Jun-08 at 11:44 am | Permalink
tim wrote:
Also, it’s up to the dealer to enforce such rules and they may not necessarily do so. Someone I may know purchased a 1911 pistol from a hypothetical dealer in California, and the dealer just told my friend “here, touch it, play with it” in lieu of the required safety demonstration. The friend I may know had purchased several rifles through the hypothetical dealer before, but this was his first handgun purchase. Laws are useless if they aren’t enforced.
Posted on 26-Jun-08 at 11:49 am | Permalink
Peggy wrote:
We should definitely ban women and Asians from getting driver’s license!
Posted on 26-Jun-08 at 9:29 pm | Permalink
ablipton wrote:
I thought the issue was “well regulated militia.” The Supreme Court, instead of reading and applying the constitution, has extended their own personal philosophies about gun ownership under the guise of review. In doing so, unelected justices have co-opted the legislative powers that are properly vested elsewhere.
If the intent of the framers and ratifiers was to give the people the means for violent insurrections, therefore any limits on weapon ownership should be unconstitutional; people should be able to possess weapons of such nature and magnitude as to give sufficient numbers of people the ability to violently oppose the government; machine guns, tanks, rocket launchers all should be constitutionally protected under this construction.
Perhaps a better interpretation of that argument would be that the amendment gives states the ability to oppose the federal government by allowing a state to maintain a militia and forbidding the federal government from removing weapons within said state; after all, at the time of ratification the 2nd amendment (and the entire bill of rights) did not apply to states, and would not until the 14th. The 2nd amendment does speak of the “security of a free state.”
Of course, such an interpretation simply cannot be accepted, as it would imply that Southern States had a constitutional right to violently secede from the Union.
Like the court’s death penalty ruling, this firearms ruling is simply unsupported by the text of the constitution. Protections for the individual ownership of firearms from state governments are political, not constitutional.
Posted on 02-Jul-08 at 8:42 pm | Permalink