I also believe that there are SOME weapons that are designed for warfare and ought to be left on the feild of battle.
The weird thing about that view is that the 2nd was meant to make sure that citizens could, if they wished, have the latest in military weaponry -- one famous SCOTUS case was decided the way it was because the weapon in question was not of a conceivable military purpose, and therefore was not protected by the 2nd.
The @nd amendment is a fixture. Its not going anywhere. How can we create more responsible gun owners through education, and how can we keep the people with mental problems and criminal records from posessing them without opening the door to a future challenge to the 2nd ammendment?
There's plenty of room in existing precedent, which could be clarified: anyone judged by a public institution as so dangerous he must be banned from their grounds should be tagged in the NICS system -- not as a "no sale", but as a warning flag, where a dealer would have to tell him he needed to get certification from a mental health professional (doctoral level) before he could buy.
It is amazing that people have to be tested to be licensed to operate a registered and insured vehicle but not a gun.
Please derive for me, from first principles, the right to operate a vehicle on someone else's property.
The 2nd Amendment is not a fixture. It doesn't have to stay, and any attempt to provide for effective regulation needs that poorly worded travesty to be removed or, at the least, replaced.
You're right it's poorly worded... for today. The Framers didn't foresee that we'd become so intellectually lazy that the meaning wasn't clear.
It should be clarified by amendment to define "militia", make clear that all citizens, as members of the militia, may organize specific militias, specify that self-defense is the beginning of the security of a free state, note that as there can be no fee for the exercise of a right, all taxes, and fees concerning firearms are prohibited, and setting out that since "infringe" means to not even meddle with peripheral matters, no law may be made regarding transport, accessories, manufacture, etc.
BTW, while defining "militia", it should set out what was taken for granted back then, that the words "bear arms" refers to personal arms of the sort one person would use against another person -- which rules out RPGs, and so on -- but that a militia may possess what can be termed "crew served weapons".
Gun ownership requires regulation, responsibility and good legislation. I don't believe anyone should be allowed to purchase a gun, Jared Loughner is a good example. How can a person who couldn't join the army and get kicked out of school because of mental illness so easily go into a store and buy a gun? This is bad legislation on Arizona's part.
Are you willing to require licenses before a person prints something and distributes it? Before speaking in public? Before running a church? How about a license to not have to testify against yourself? or one for habeus corpus?
Yes, it's bad legislation, but probably because lawmakers' and others imaginations are limited. The law provides that someone adjudged incompetent may not own a firearm, but the definition of "adjudged" is narrow. It certainly should extend to people judged so dangerous that they're banned from a public institution! Such a situation should initiate a flag in the NICS system (see above).
The USA is gun crazy. Americans simply like guns. For some people they are nothing more than toys. They wrap themselves up in the Second Amendment, call gun ownership a right and insist anyone who wants a gun be allowed to buy one.
To forbid ownership ahead of time is to throttle a right, and to violate self-ownership. Self-defense is a right of nature, and entails choosing the means of one's defense.
And yes, for many they are toys. Like golf clubs, you take them to the "course" and use them to send projectiles to a desired location.
You need to take a test to drive a car, register it, license it, but in many states buying a gun is like buying a loaf of bread. Go into a sporting goods store (or Wal*Mart for that matter), put your money on the counter and walk out.
Not in any Walmart in the United States of America you don't. At the very least your name is going to be run through the NICS database; some places, they'll do a background check with the state police.
This is possible because of a strong gun lobby pushing lawmakers into their way of thinking. Could you imagine drivers, physicians, lawyers without tests or licenses? Gun laws need to be stricter. You hear all the time "when guns are outlawed only outlaws will have guns". That's a crock of shit. "The Government is coming to take away your guns" is mere demagoguery.
"Pushing"? No -- trying to drag the country back to the position held for two centuries and championed by Hubert Humphrey and all leading politicians of the day.
As for those people without licenses -- yes, and no. Obviously someone ought to be measuring qualifications, but I object to the government doing it; that's the sort of thing the Framers had ion mind when they forbade monopolies: any government-endorsed business or guild.
Drivers are a slightly different matter; even if all highways were privately owned, there would be licenses, because no road owner is going to accept liability by letting any old person operate on his property.
I never ceases to fascinate me that for all the gun control laws in existence, experts concede that none of them stop crime or violence -- so the proposed solution is always more of the same!
For many, guns are nothing more than big boy's toys. They need to be classified as a dangerous weapon as they are and need to become harder to get. Licensing, test, registering. The gun violence is epidemic in America. If there were fewer guns in the hands of people, there would be less gun violence.
Fact: for the last ten years crime has trended downward, while gun ownership has shot up radically. And when states have adopted "shall issue" concealed carry laws, violent crime has dropped.
But are you willing to extend your reasoning to other inherent rights? Would you make free speech harder to do (many liberals like that idea)? Would you put barriers to belonging to a church?
All lobbying needs to be curtailed to a great degree really. Thats why that scotus decision on anonymous corporate donors can't stand. That is still an overall issue that needs to be addressed.
That decision has to stand -- what has to change is the sloppy law that led to that decision... although at this point, there's been a precedent set that free speech applies to everything from grandpa who think's Nixon''s president to the family dog, things have been made harder. If Congress had written the law well to begin with, we would never have faced the problem.
I think we could get an amendment passed simply stating that "person" means a human with a pulse, and political rights belong only to persons.
now on a street level... we have to find a way for the right to bear arms be protected, while keeping weapons out of dangerous peoples hands.
who gets to define what dangerous is? one wallmart clerk said no and one said yes...
Currently wallmart salesmen are the ones deciding who is or isn't dangerous enough to get bullets?
REALLY???
"Really"? No. They aren't the ones deciding anything. They do have the privilege, under the law, of deciding the a person is obviously deranged or dangerous, but except in that rare case, they're making no decisions at all.
But as for means, here's mine:
In grade school, every school teaches the NRA's "Eddie Eagle" gun safety course, which boils down to leave them alone, and tell an adult if you find one laying around.
In middle school, start hands-on classes; use the Boy Scouts of America methods, augmented with lots of safety material, and exercises intended to show that these are serious items (my favorite is putting a mask of no real person on a honeydew melon and shooting it -- to the uninformed, it actually looks like brains blowing out).
In high school, get down to dealing with calibers besides .22, stripped and cleaning, disabling, self-defense, etc.
And as a part of the course, at the end everyone undergoes an evaluation -- a good one could be designed so that for the most part, they don't even know they're being evaluated (e.g., have class quizzes with evaluation-type questions included with the test material, and tell the students the point is that they should be able to get the answers right even if they have to concentrate on something else).
That's been based on the fact, as shown by plenty of research, that serious training reduces misuse and accidents. The weakness is that disorders such as schizophrenia may not be manifesting in high school -- so my proposal above would still be necessary.
Crew-served weapons were the legitimate realm of organized militias (and towns).
