UPDATE: The repeal just passed 2d reading by a vote of 164 to 137! The bill now proceeds to a committee for public hearings. The Canadian Conservative Party has 143 Members of Parliament, so the bill attracted over 20 votes from members of other parties–significantly more than had been expected by Canadian political commentators. Today is a good day for Liberty.
Will take place in the Canadian House of Commons today, at approximately 5:30 p.m., Eastern Time. Bill C-391 is a private member’s bill (by Candice Hoeppner of Portage—Lisgar, Manitoba) to repeal Canada’s failed and extremely expensive long gun registry.
Background information about the registry is available in this short presentation from Prof. Gary Mauser, a magazine article by Mauser, and in Mauser’s journal articles on the politics and efficacy of the registry, and in some articles I have written about Canada.
For the last two decades, Canada has been the test bed of the international gun prohibition movement. Repressive ideas from Canada have been exported around the world by the international gun prohibition lobby, which is vastly better at international coordination than the other side.
Repeal of the Canadian registry would, accordingly, be of tremendous global significance. Repeal would also shatter the claim by the Canadian gun prohibition lobby that gun control in Canada is an irreversible ratchet.
If the House votes for repeal today, then there will be committee hearings on Bill C-391, followed by another vote in the House, followed by Senate consideration.
You can follow a webcast of the House of Commons by going here.
Strict says:
“For the last two decades, Canada has been the test bed of the international gun prohibition movement. ”
No it hasn’t.
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November 4, 2009, 3:14 pmuh_clem says:
international gun prohibition movement
< rolls eyes >
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November 4, 2009, 3:24 pmepeeist says:
Talk about overblown!
The specific Canadian gun registry system is ridiculously problematic and expensive, and probably should be killed off. That said, gun registration is no more synonymous with gun prohibition than vehicle registration is synonymous with vehicle prohibition.
Also, and I say this as an American currently living in Canada and who supports the U.S. right to bear arms, it’s a U.S. right in the U.S. Constitution and if it’s that important to me I should move back to the U.S. (or become a Canadian citizen and advocate for change). Canada is a different country, with a different Constitution and Charter of Rights. It also permits gun ownership to a far greater extent than, say, the U.K. or other European countries. I could obtain a handgun permit if I wanted here in Canada, with no problems despite not being a citizen.
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November 4, 2009, 3:24 pmAbdul Abulbul Amir says:
From a political point of view it may not be the failure you suggest. Many jobs depend on the registry. Having job holder’s livelihoods dependent on the cause you champion is not political failure by any stretch.
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November 4, 2009, 3:32 pmMark N. says:
Yeah, hasn’t Europe been the test-bed? Canada’s gun-ownership rate of about 25% of households is low by American standards, but hardly “prohibition” when 1 in 4 households own at least one gun. It’s considerably higher than, say, the UK’s 10%, Japan’s 1%, and even a bit higher than Australia’s 20%.
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November 4, 2009, 3:34 pmDrWyrm says:
I have modified epeeist’s comment to illustrate the absurdity of requiring registration for rights. (at least how it seems to me, anyway)
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November 4, 2009, 3:41 pmRob says:
What you seem to fail to understand is that as problematic as the gun registry has been so far, the majority of Canadians support some form of gun control. We don’t want guns to be easy to buy or own.
Face it, there’s no right to bear arms in Canada. People can have guns if they really want to, but only because the government, acting in accordance with the wishes of the citizenry say they can. Wait, isn’t that called democracy in action?
Besides, unless she’s got the caucus behind her, plus a lot more support from the Liberals than anyone expects, there’s no way in hell this will pass in a minority Conservative government.
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November 4, 2009, 3:41 pmMalvolio says:
An American would say that the right to bear arms isn’t recognized in Canada. The whole point of having rights is that they should not be over-ridden, even “democratically”.
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November 4, 2009, 3:46 pmJRL says:
I would submit that the right to bear arms is no more a “U.S. right” than freedom of speech is a “U.S. right.” Self defense is a natural right, and the right to bear arms is just an extension of that right.
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November 4, 2009, 3:48 pmStrict says:
“Self defense is a natural right, and the right to bear arms is just an extension of that right.”
The international gun lobby is very concerned about child soldiers, who are handed guns and trained to fight.
The child with a gun is transformed into a child soldier — that is, he is placed in a position of danger, not of safety.
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November 4, 2009, 3:53 pmMark N. says:
Yes, and a Canadian might say that the right to health care isn’t recognized in the United States. The trouble with natural rights, is that lots of people have different beliefs about what they are.
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November 4, 2009, 3:56 pmRob says:
The right to bear arms isn’t being overridden, democratically or otherwise. It simply doesn’t exist in Canada. We wrote our constitution to enumerate our rights and bearing arms simply isn’t among them. The fact that the US included a right to bear arms in their consitution is lovely, but irrelevant.
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November 4, 2009, 3:58 pmStrict says:
“Repressive ideas from Canada have been exported around the world by the international gun prohibition lobby”
Another absurd claim.
IANSA’s goals are “ideas from Canada”? Are you sure that gun restriction and registration policies are “ideas from Canada”?
The effort to prevent small arms from flowing into Somalia is an “idea from Canada”? Really?
And IANSA wasn’t even in existence two decades ago.
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November 4, 2009, 3:59 pmAllan Walstad says:
I think the key to understanding Dave’s point about prohibition lies in “the claim by the Canadian gun prohibition lobby that gun control in Canada is an irreversible ratchet.” It’s not all that often that national governments roll back massive regulatory programs or let go of instruments of monitoring and control over people’s lives that they had previously acquired. The high tide of the gun control movement in the US came perhaps with the so-called “assault weapon” ban of the early 90s. Maybe the tide is turning in Canada as well.
Perhaps more accurately, the right to bear arms is not recognized by the government in Canada. Is that democracy in action? Maybe so. In the US, the Founders wisely understood the possibility that unfettered democracy might pose a threat to individual rights. That’s how we got the Bill of Rights.
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November 4, 2009, 4:02 pmCrust says:
The Canadian constitution is very different from the American constitution. And it’s not just that there’s no right to bear arms. Among other issues, there’s also no separation of church and state. Indeed, there is a constitutionally mandated entanglement of church and state, well, province. The federal constitution there guarantees the availability of Catholic education in Ontario and Protestant education in Quebec.
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November 4, 2009, 4:05 pmDrWyrm says:
One might just as easily say that the rights to free speech, freedom of the press, and freedom of assembly do not exist in Iran.
Apparently solving human rights problems is easier that we thought!
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November 4, 2009, 4:05 pmAllan Walstad says:
Mark N. got the jump on me, I see.
Actually, what was enumerated were government powers–enumerated and thereby limited. The Bill of Rights was written to protect some of the most important inalienable rights. So you tend to see language to the effect that such & such right shall not be infringed, not that people shall have such & such right. This is quite well understood historically.
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November 4, 2009, 4:07 pmKevin R says:
And whoever said that would obviously be ignorant of the difference between positive rights and negative rights.
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November 4, 2009, 4:10 pmCarl Donath says:
As the Canadian system has demonstrated in no uncertain terms, registration does nothing useful. Nobody who supports such registration has demonstrated any benefit of doing so save only to satisfy their own baseless biases.
It does not hinder any crime-related purchases to any meaningful degree.
It does not assist in solving crimes to any meaningful degree.
It does not expend significant taxpayer for any meaningful social return save for employment of bureaucrats.
The mantra of “but we need to know who owns them” is lame, as the question of “why?” is never answered beyond rank bigotry. The demands for control at best demonstrate no useful results, and at worst deny basic universal rights for upstanding citizens. Demanding registration of printers/copiers/faxes for similar reasons (preventing/tracking libel, forgery, obscenity, revolutionary rhetoric, etc.) is just as absurd for similar reasons (only the law-abiding cooperate, criminals have no qualms about breaking laws to break laws, few if any crimes would be solved, oppressive governments can easily abuse the lists, etc.).
Tyranny of an ignorant/bigoted majority is not a benefit of democracy.
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November 4, 2009, 4:13 pmWaste93 says:
Which is why health care isn’t a natural right. Rights are dependent on the individual, not the requirement that others do for you.
Free speech allows one to talk but does not require anyone to listen. The right to bear arms allows one to keep weapons to protect ones self or others but there is no requirement that I protect my neighbor.
Health care requires others to provide (pay) for you, and hence is not a natural right anymore than if I said the right to keep and bear arms required others to pay for my firearm. Or that free speech required you to stand there and listen to what I have to say.
There is a saying that the right of my fist ends at the tip of you nose. Requiring people to pay other peoples bills is not a right. It may be moral. But it isn’t a natural right.
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November 4, 2009, 4:13 pmMark N. says:
They need not be ignorant of the difference: one can recognize the difference and not hold that only negative rights ought to be guaranteed.
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November 4, 2009, 4:14 pmMark N. says:
Incorrect. A particular, libertarian conception of rights is dependent on the individual, which most people do not hold.
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November 4, 2009, 4:15 pmDavid Nieporent says:
Rights don’t come from the constitution. Thus, whether it’s in there or not is irrelevant.
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November 4, 2009, 4:21 pmAllan Walstad says:
Oops, sorry Malvolio (and Mark N too, I suppose). Malvolio is the one who got the difference between rights not existing and rights not recognized. Mark N. may be correct also with regard to what a Canadian might say. Nevertheless, the “right” to medical care would be a right to take the resources from someone else who is just minding their own business, trying to allocate their own resources to meet their own needs. Rights to command whatever resources one “needs” are necessarily in conflict with each other, given limited resources. Rights of the sort recognized in B of R are not like that. They are rights that everyone can pretty much enjoy at the same time without conflict. That’s why they occupy a special status.
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November 4, 2009, 4:25 pmdave h says:
I think “natural rights” is a pretty specific term. You can say that the government should guarantee more than natural rights, but it requires a different argument together to claim that health care is a natural right. The main problem being that the “right” you’re talking about is really forcing another person to do as you say.
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November 4, 2009, 4:26 pmMark N. says:
Plenty of classical liberals did make arguments of exactly that sort, though. Many thought that universal education was a natural right, for example, being the foundation of a meritocratic society.
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November 4, 2009, 4:30 pmjheath says:
Ditto Allan Walstad where he offers that David’s central point is that repeal would be a striking exception to the long-term international trend of increasing regulation of firearms, and a powerful counterargument to gun registration in the U.S. BTW I am an American living in Canada.
Allan’s reply to Rob, about enumeration of powers, applies well to the U.S. Constitution but Rob was referring to the Canadian Constitution. Allan’s point is important nonetheless, since it essentially asks: “With whom rests the presumption?” Regardless of what the 2nd Am purported to protect, under what delegated power could Congress in 1789 have criminalized gun possession? The modern 2nd Am debate was conducted under the deluded presumption that the absence of an enumerated right would justify the presumption of a federal power that was not enumerated. It was completely backwards. As were the “collectivist” assumptions that the states could somehow regulate the militia in contravention of federal law, when the militia powers were *explicitly* delegated, well debated, and later adjudicated to the benefit of federal powers in every case.
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November 4, 2009, 4:33 pmMartinned says:
LOL!
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November 4, 2009, 4:36 pmJeffH says:
There is a difference between saying: “You have a right to obtain healthcare if you need it” and “You have the right to have the government pay for your healthcare if you need it”
Just as there is a difference between: “You have the right to arm and defend yourself” and “You have the right to have the government buy you a gun”
Trying to analagize the right to purchase your own gun, to the right to have someone else pay for your heath care, is disingenuous at best.
You can’t have a “right” to something that is scarce. We will never be able to provide everyone with all of the health care services they want or need. The only question is what system is going to be used to distribute those scarce resources. While there are certainly arguments to be made for a government controlled system rather than a market controlled one, the idea of a “right” to healthcare isn’t one of them.
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November 4, 2009, 4:39 pmSteve says:
It’s nice to see folks coming around on the concept of unenumerated rights! Yes, it’s true, you can have rights whether they’re written in a document or not.
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November 4, 2009, 4:43 pmTim says:
The rights of man exist everywhere and always. Nobody gave our framers a monopoly on the rights of man. We managed to get (at least) one more in our Constitution than yours did, apparently, but that doesn’t mean the right to bear arms doesn’t exist in Canada.
There’s no reasonable right to free speech in Canada, either....
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November 4, 2009, 5:04 pmModa says:
Um... a million creditors pursuing debtors in bankruptcy would beg to differ.
Seriously, that has to be one of the dumbest things I’ve read in a long time.
Yeah, just like pink unicorns.
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November 4, 2009, 5:07 pmAllan Walstad says:
I think of J.S. Mill in On Liberty, where he starts by proclaiming a fundamental right of individuals to be free to order their own affairs, make their own choices, allocate their own property, etc. Then he spends the rest of the book taking it all back. That’s my recollection, although it’s been a long time since I read it. But I think you’re right on that about Mill, at least.
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November 4, 2009, 5:26 pmAllan Walstad says:
Um, what the creditors have a right to is to divvy up the remaining assets. Your attempt to use that as a counter-example is one of the...never mind.
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November 4, 2009, 5:30 pmsubmandave says:
From what I’ve read and heard concerning problems scheduling and receiving treatment under their National Health Insurance Program, many a Canadian might say that the right to health care isn’t recognized in Canada, either.
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November 4, 2009, 5:42 pmDilan Esper says:
“Natural rights” talk is silly to begin with. As anything other than a rallying cry (such as in the Declaration of Independence), “natural rights” are worth nothing unless you have a legal system capable and willing to enforce them. And, as pointed out upthread, there’s no criteria whatsoever for determining what a natural right is and what its content is, which is reason enough for the legal system to completely ignore, disregard, and mock people who make natural rights arguments. (Natural rights are also often, though not always, connected to religion– and as there is no evidence whatsoever supporting the supernatural claims of religions, and even believers have beliefs that are irreconcilable with each other, there’s no reason to obey rules that religions claim were imposed by God either.)
But I have to say, arguments for a natural right to bear arms are doubly stupid. Arms (except for stones and the like) are a technology and don’t exist in a state of nature. You are arguing that humans “naturally” have the right to use a technology that didn’t even exist for the first couple of million years of the existence of humanoids.
Of course, one could say what we say with speech, which is essentially that there is a right to use any speech technology even if it didn’t always exist. But if you claim that as the “natural” right with respect to arms, that would mean people have a natural right to bear a nuclear weapon.
You might, of course, reply that only those weapons that are reasonably related to self-defense are within the natural right to bear arms. But, of course, that creates huge line-drawing problems. If only there were a democratically-accountable body we could turn to who could draw those lines....
Seriously, the Second Amendment protects the right to bear arms. But it isn’t because it is a “natural” right– it’s because it’s in the Constitution and we finally have courts that are willing to enforce it.
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November 4, 2009, 5:53 pmPeteP says:
Vote going on now — live streaming — looks like an oherwhelming ‘pass’ so far .
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November 4, 2009, 5:54 pmPeteP says:
Passed — 164 to 137 !
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November 4, 2009, 6:00 pmSmarty says:
“From what I’ve read and heard concerning problems scheduling and receiving treatment under their National Health Insurance Program, many a Canadian might say that the right to health care isn’t recognized in Canada, either.”
That’s gotta sting.
Did we forget the thing about how your right to swing your fist ends at my nose?
Your right to splint your broken arm ends at my wallet. You cannot say that you have the natural right to break your arm and make me pay for it. You have a natural right to swim. You do not have a natural right to make me pay for a lifeguard at a lake. You do not have a natural right for me to pay for your CPR if someone pulls you half-drowned out of the lake.
We the people may choose to provide charity, or to even provide some of the above. But the statists have pushed this to the point that we the people are being forced at gunpoint to support invented rights, that are actually just an excuse for socialists and other deadbeats to swing their hands right in our wallets because they want to.
As far as trying to throw away our second amendment right, the right to bear arms is an extension of the natural right to defend yourself. If something or someone is trying to deprive you of life, liberty or property that is yours, you have the right to defend yourself, and if that means you have the right to use a kitchen sink, then you can. Just because POS judges have sometimes ruled otherwise,
Obama is now allowing people with AIDS to come here, where according to some of you, they will have the right to free health care. This will cost us 10s of thousands of $$$ each year per each person who comes over, even without health care reform. Where is my right to say “heck no”? Lenin told the useful idiots of the west to use our courts and the bill of rights to destroy us, and those of you inventing
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November 4, 2009, 6:00 pmbruce says:
By definition, the Canadian government *is* depriving an individual of the right to defend himself, and the fruits of their lawful labors, against the seizure of those fruits.
The act of one individual willingly giving ‘lawful fruits’ to another individual, is charity. The act of forcefully taking ‘lawful fruits’ from one individual to give to another individual, sanctioned by a government or not, is theft.
This does not hold for general levies such as taxes which (in theory at least) should be used to benefit the society in general by providing services that benefit all; roads, sewage, trash collection, military & police protection, etc, rather than an individual.
Whether or not the individual “has a right to bear arms” under these (Canadian) circumstances is simply political theater. They are already defenseless and violated...
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November 4, 2009, 6:04 pmNorthern Dave says:
The long gun registry has been a colossal waste of tax payers money. $2 Billion dollars so far and an extra quarter billion per year or so in perpetuity.
The guns being used to commit crimes here are already usually prohibited (and many such types like easily concealable automatic handguns have been for over 70 years). Controls have increased. I can’t even inherit my Uncle’s Wilson-package modified 45 since I don’t carry a pre-existing prohibited weapons license (yes, checked with very high up the ladder offical) and they can no longer be obtained except by certain businesses and on a special court order (a judge can grant a right but it is rarely done — a diamond dealer I know of was turned down even though he often carries six figures in valuables....).
The anti-gun lobby has been effective in frightening urban voters with the false promise of personal safety through registration. Urban gun violence is at all time highs.
It should be noted that when I was a child every household I knew had guns and nobody used them on each other. It is and was an issue of moral values, not possession of weapons.
As an interesting sidenote for Americans not familiar with Canada’s registration process, I could not even get a long gun and ammo license without the signed approval of my spouse. If she had not been willing to sign it would be illegal for me to purchase long guns or ammunition.
It is time this misguided program was canned.
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November 4, 2009, 6:04 pmNorthern Dave says:
Excellent!!!!
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November 4, 2009, 6:05 pmDavid Newton says:
Canada is nothing compared to the UK. In the UK it is illegal to own a pump-action shotgun with more than a two-round capacity. In the UK it is illegal to own any semi-automatic rifle except a .22 rimfire one. In the UK it is illegal to own virtually any handgun. In the UK any talk of legitimate use of firearms for self-defence gets shouted down by people that make the Brady campaign look positively sensible and reasonable about firearms.
When there is serious debate in the UK about getting rid of its nannyish and illiberal and illogical firearms laws, then there can be talk of a setback for the international anti-gun banning brigade. When there is legislation passed in the UK to achieve the repeal of those laws then we can talk about having them on the run.
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November 4, 2009, 6:07 pmSmarty says:
Volokh, Your editing program is mentally ill. flipped out.
Anyway,
“From what I’ve read and heard concerning problems scheduling and receiving treatment under their National Health Insurance Program, many a Canadian might say that the right to health care isn’t recognized in Canada, either.”
That’s gotta sting.
Did we forget the thing about how your right to swing your fist ends at my nose?
Your right to splint your broken arm ends at my wallet. You cannot say that you have the natural right to break your arm and make me pay for it. You have a natural right to swim. You do not have a natural right to make me pay for a lifeguard at a lake. You do not have a natural right for me to pay for your CPR if someone pulls you half-drowned out of the lake.
We the people may choose to provide charity, or to even provide some of the above. But the statists have pushed this to the point that we the people are being forced at gunpoint to support invented rights, that are actually just an excuse for socialists and other deadbeats to swing their hands right in our wallets because they want to.
Obama is now allowing people with AIDS to come here, where according to some of you, they will have the right to free health care. This will cost us 10s of thousands of $$$ each year per each person who comes over, even without health care reform. Where is my right to say “heck no”? Lenin told the useful idiots of the west to use our courts and the bill of rights to destroy us, and those of you inventing rights are following his wishes even if you don’t realize it.
Re the right to technology, the right to life and liberty, two components of natural rights that I think we all agree to, can be defended however you must, even if that means using a kitchen sink, much less a rifle. While Lenin’s usefull idiots often manage to put in place judges who choose to subvert our rights, those rights rise above law, both legislatively enacted laws and caselaw. Tyranny does not eliminate natural rights, they can only supress them and (unfairly) punish those people who express them.
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November 4, 2009, 6:10 pmshippedout says:
This just in.
The Canadian Parliament votes in favour of scrapping the long-gun registry
164 to 137 votes.
It’s not over for us Canadians yet but it’s a step in the right direction.
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November 4, 2009, 6:15 pmMartinned says:
I have no idea how natural rights came up in this thread. While self-defense is a natural right, owning a gun almost certainly isn’t, and gun registration couldn’t be further removed from natural rights if they’d tried.
Since any link to natural rights here is absurd, the only thing to do is to make a Canadian constitutional argument (the charter is here), or to make a policy argument. Since the former is probably not going to work, I’d say: have at it, make your best case to any Canadian readers who might be reading this. Just one tip: you (all) may want to tone it down on the “vast international conspiracy” language, because that kind of thing doesn’t make the argument any more convincing.
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November 4, 2009, 6:22 pmRobert says:
Actually, a friend of mine had a very simple and elegant solution for that line drawing problem. There IS a simple and logical place to draw that line... Crew served weapons. If you can haul it around by yourself, it’s YOUR weapon and protected under your right to keep and bear arms as enumerated in the constituion. If you need your three buddied and a half ton truck to haul it around, then no, sorry, you’re outta luck.
So, yes, that light machinegun might be acceptable for you to purchase. If you want a Ma Duece of a 105mm Howitzer, well, you’ll have to talk to your state government about those... Mind you, I don’t think anything like this will ever HAPPEN, but that Is the logical and historical place to draw the line... (Muskets and rifles were individual weapons for instance, but things like cannon were owned by the state...)
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November 4, 2009, 6:24 pmMartinned says:
Just to follow up and clarify:
The narrowest category of rights is ius cogens, laws that are so essential to human dignity that we do not accept any law that purports to abrogate them as real law. This includes things like the bans on genocide and torture.
The next narrowest is ius naturale, natural law. These are the rights that are common to all peoples, or at least would be if they were all free. Cf. the Institutes, book I, section 2:
Clearly the distinction between self-defense and gun ownership follows: there has never been a society that has outlawed self-defense, but many free societies, including my own, severely (and legitimately) restrict gun ownership.
A broader category still are universal human rights, as laid down in human rights instruments such as the Universal Declaration and the ICCPR/ICESCR, and to a lesser extent the ECHR. These rights are still in some sense universal, in that they apply to all of mankind, but they are subject to change, instead of being “fixed and unchangeable”.
To say that the US Bill of Rights is somehow the definitive statement on the rights that all human beings have or should have is parochial in the extreme.
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November 4, 2009, 6:33 pmNotACanadian says:
What language? I think it’s reasonable and not at all paranoid to suggest that an organization named the “International Action Network on Small Arms”, whose website prominently displays slogans and headlines such as:
IANSA the international voice against gun violence
Disarm domestic violence
Control Arms
Gun Violence: The Global Crisis
World unites to tackle global arms trade
School shootings worldwide since 1986
Laws on civilian ownership of handguns in 16 countries
Gun deaths since 1 January 2009
Virginia AG candidate Steve Shannon sticks to his gun control
The gun registry — stay or go?
and artwork depicting guns in trash can and a “no guns” symbol, qualifies as “gun prohibitionist”. It’s pretty obvious they support law/policy restricting access/availability of firearms.
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November 4, 2009, 6:36 pmPeteP says:
“Clearly the distinction between self-defense and gun ownership follows: there has never been a society that has outlawed self-defense,”
You haven’t been to England recently, I take it.
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November 4, 2009, 6:44 pmJPK says:
The problem with “Child Soldiers” is not a gun rights issue.
How many Child Soldiers you see shooting at each other in the USA?
The international anti-gun lobby is not overly concerned, because they do so little to actually help the corrupted nations in Africa and elswhere that this does occure. Half of which actually have restrictive gun laws. The problems are far deeper than even enforcing the laws they have. You have defective, corrupt Rebels fighting against defective and corrupt govt’s.
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November 4, 2009, 6:50 pmMartinned says:
O, sure, as long as they have a website, they must be legit. In case you hadn’t noticed, there are websites about just about anything these days. Outside the United States, no one cares. Politically, it’s a non-issue, even in Canada. Nobody’s talking about this, there is no “international gun prohibition movement”. Occasionally someone tries to make a treaty to restrict the flow of arms to war zones, or to make arms embargoes more effecitve, but only in the US is anything vaguely in the vicinity of long guns a political hot topic.
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November 4, 2009, 6:59 pmBC says:
It’s adorable that you think your society, which severely restricts gun ownership, is “free”.
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November 4, 2009, 7:01 pmIan Argent says:
Not at all true — all throughout the age of sail private individuals owned cannon aboard ship, quite legally (and in line with the vision if the Founders; Letters of Marque and Reprisal are useless without an armed vessel). Any number of people owned cannon, gatling guns, etc, quite legally. Blackpowder cannon are perfectly legal to own in the US; and there’s quite a number of privately owned M2HBs, at least one privately owned minigun that I know of, and if you don’t mind the expense of ammo it’s perfectly legal to buy a 20mm single-shot rifle with explosive ammo. (Check your state laws before doing so — it is NOT legal for me to own many of those in NJ without an impossible-to-obtain permit — though a gatling gun is probably legal).
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November 4, 2009, 7:10 pmMartinned says:
It’s adorable that you think I don’t recognise begging the question when I see it.
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November 4, 2009, 7:15 pmMartinned says:
Actually, you could also describe this trick as an example of the No True Scotsman fallacy.
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November 4, 2009, 7:17 pmroad2serfdom says:
Is that kind of like the ‘No true international anti-gun lobby’ fallacy?
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November 4, 2009, 7:25 pmFrancesco Poli says:
The horror of child soldiers has nothing to do with the right to gun ownership. This is nothing more than histrionics, a blatant and lame attempt at hiding a lack of actual arguments against the right to own guns in the heartwrenching, but besides the topic, plight of children.
By that “reasoning” (and I have to use the term very, very loosely), China does not have Internet censorship simply because the government restricts no Internet information — it just jails and executes any ISP who doesn’t “voluntarily” implement those restrictions.
(I’m not reading between the lines, by the way. That is the official Chinese party line on Internet censorship in China.)
Again, restricting the ownership of the printing presses is abridging freedom of speech, just as restricting the ownership of the tools of self-defense. Plus, of course, the idea that self-defense isn’t outlawed in many societies that yet consider themselves free — at least de-facto in the court of law — is just naive.
Definitive? Perhaps not. Yet I’d be damned to find one currently in practice that was better, clearer and more thoroughy — I suggest you re-read the 10th amendment, for instance, because your claim that the US Constitution is a “closed” document is baseless — and when it comes to the language, the prohibiting governments from infringing rights, rather than enabling the government to give or take rights as they please — it is unique, and very much definitive.
For example, it certainly shames horrendous documents such as the 1948 universal declaration of human rights, which prohibits any “discrimination” (i.e. it restricts speech), and claims “work” (AKA stipend), “security” (???), “rest” and “sustenance” (AKA to work whenever they want, i.e. stipend at their discretion). Oh, and the right to a “fair world”... good grief, it’s literally the right to unicorns.
If you mean that there’s no moustache-twirling shadowy cabinet dedicated to the destruction of individual freedoms, maybe. But as soon as we leave saturday morning cartoon worldviews, there isn’t much talk about legalizing gun ownership outside the US because the international gun prohibition movement has pretty much settled the issue, i.e. it has achieved a (temporary, pyhrric) “victory”. As of now, it elicits less scandalized gasps in european countries to come out as a transsexual than it would to come out against gun control. That doesn’t seem to suggest gun control is a neutral issue outside the US, far from it.
Just 100 years ago, it was considered quaint, but not scandalous for Sherlock Holmes to practice his gun inside his house in the heart of London. He and Watson carried revolvers as a matter of practice, and Doyle got no heat on the topic. What a difference a century makes!
PS: right outside the UN, there is a large statue of a revolver with the barrel twisted. No army issues revolver as standard equipment. It is purely a monument to the prohibition of civil ownership of weapons, which is part of the goal and agenda of those who fight against freedom worldwide.
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November 4, 2009, 7:27 pmGordon Langston says:
Having a Right to Self Defense and then denying the right to firearms seems at odds with reality.
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November 4, 2009, 7:30 pmNotACanadian says:
What does legitimacy have to do with anything? (Unless you’re suggesting IANSA is fictional and the website is a hoax....) There’s a semantic difference between “movement” and “lobby”, by the way. All it takes to lobby is a mailing address, a computer, a telephone, and a few staffers/volunteers. Whether the lobby is effective is another issue entirely. “Reports” and “facts” by two-bit NGOs have a nasty habit of being dredged up by political staffers to support whatever feel-good proposal the politician in question is pushing.
Efforts to control/sanction the international small arms trade, as you say, tend to have minimal impact on state actors. They do impact civilians, however, particularly in the context of import/export controls. For example, US executive/administrative actions have prohibited importation of Steyr and Norinco firearms, some Chinese/Russian military surplus longarms/ammunition, and any arms deemed “nonsporting”. As you may surmise, banning cheap foreign imports tends to have a significant distorting effect on just about any market.
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November 4, 2009, 7:43 pmBC says:
Whatever helps you sleep better. The fact remains: you have to beg your government for permission to own effective means of self-defense, and yet call your society “free”.
I point, and I laugh.
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November 4, 2009, 7:49 pmSybil says:
I don’t understand why guns (of any type) should not be registered.
I need a licence for my car and dog but I can have a weapon with there being a record of THAT ????
I have no problem with hunting.
I just think guns should ALL be registered.
Who is “being denied the right to have guns” ?
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November 4, 2009, 7:52 pmRob says:
I live in a city of over a million people. Of the 33 homicides last year, 11 of them were committed with a gun. Oddly enough, I think I can handle being laughed at. I think it might have to do with feeling safe.
I like the social contract that comes with living in Canada. Giving up the ability to take up arms (regardless of whether this is a right or not, or whether it should be or not) is, in my view, an acceptable price to pay for the safety gained from it.
No, I’m not a libertarian. I don’t think I will ever be one, either.
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November 4, 2009, 7:56 pmBC says:
When you require registration of lawfully-owned guns, you are creating an apparatus that (a) has never been of any meaningful use to legitimate law enforcement efforts; and (b) has enormous potential for abuse by overzealous law enforcement, hoplophobes, nanny statists, and other assorted busybodies.
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November 4, 2009, 7:58 pmNorthern Dave says:
Scuppered yourself, Martinned, with this:
” Politically, it’s a non-issue, even in Canada. ”
We are discussing a vote in the Canadian House of Commons this very evening in which a preponderance of Members under a minority Government voted in favour of repeal of a piece of legislation and the disbanding of a pork-barrel government division.
This is an issue in Canada.
(Not as major as our eglitarian right to Health Care :-) See here for the righteous fury of Canadians against foul elitist queue-jumpers:
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/life/health/h1n1-swine-flu/private-clinic-patients-jump-the-line-for-flu-shot/article1347746/
)
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November 4, 2009, 7:59 pmBC says:
I suppose it would be unsporting to point out that your country enjoyed low crime rates for many years before the advent of its current prohibitionist policies toward personally-owned firearms; in other words, that the one has little to do with the other, and you’d enjoy substantially the same safety even if your government had greater respect for your freedoms.
In any case, like I said to the other guy: whatever helps you sleep at night. There are rather a lot of us who prefer the risks of what Samuel Adams once called “the animating contest of freedom” to the comparative safety of servility.
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November 4, 2009, 8:07 pmMartinned says:
And do you see Canadians marching in outrage outside the parliament buildings, talking heads yappin’ about this bill for weeks, etc.?
Seconded. For years now, we’ve averaged about 200 homicides in a country of 16 million people, of which about 60 with a fire arm. In my city (about 150.000 people), there is no part of town where I cannot safely walk, day or night.
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November 4, 2009, 8:09 pmMartinned says:
That has to be one of the greatest euphemisms of all time: “animating” to describe the crime in America.
FYI, in my country there has never been widespread gun ownership, and at the moment we rank among the lowest % gun ownership in the world. I don’t see how “greater respect for our freedoms” could do anything but make matters worse.
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November 4, 2009, 8:13 pmNorthern Dave says:
On the issue of Canadian thinking with regard to Health Care, perhaps an analogy to property issues would help.
All Canadian land is held from the Crown. Technically (read legally) the Crown of Canada owns every right to every thing on, under and over the Country. When I buy property I become a freeholder from the Crown. Since the Crown is Us (while vested in an individual, the people feel quite free to replace said individual if deemed necessary — see the Evil James II of England, for example) this means that the People collectively own the joint. Any individual who, say, owns a mine does so at the People’s sufferage. If they displease Us we revoke their freeholder status.
A lot of business people chafe at this, but it’s the way it is (there are some who deny it, but let them try and stop land seizure for an overpass .....).
So the point is that Canadians have traditionally had a more collectivist history and mind-bent than Americans (“Life! Liberty! Property!). This is changing under immigration and I have no idea where it will end up (Hindus I’ve talked with seem to be much more independently minded, for example).
As such we have been more egalitarian. We hold that all citizens are to be treated universally the same. If we don’t look after each other we are morally in the wrong. (Note: My hard-core Conservative friends are contrarian and long for the days of Slavery being legal once more......).
Any politician who suggested a two-tier health care system would be permanent committing political suicide
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November 4, 2009, 8:17 pmBC says:
May your chains continue to rest lightly upon you.
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November 4, 2009, 8:21 pmNorthern Dave says:
True, BC. The core Presbyterian values of Canada made it a peaceful place (“boring” I recall several prominent jet-setters referring to Toronto in the ’60’s). Those values are fundamentally shifting to a neo-pagan humanism and the violence is on the rise — specifically where the paradigm shifts are greatest.
Gun access has never been the cause of the violence. As I said before when I was a young person everyone I knew (including Grandmamma) had multiple guns. They never used them on each other as that was precluded by their moral values. The Swiss had a military gun per household with no gun crime to speak of while South Africa had huge gun crime. It’s about values.
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November 4, 2009, 8:24 pmAnon says:
Not sure why allowing guns is a victory for “liberty.” This is a right that happens to be included in the U.S. Constitution, but a perfectly reasonable nation could decide not to permit individuals to own guns. In fact, it’s still not clear if the U.S. Constitution permits non-militia individuals to own guns, and the Supreme Court will be considering the issue soon.
In short, some people may consider gun control to reflect principles of “liberty,” in that they don’t have to fear that their friends are armed. I know that I feel safer living in a city that has strict gun control laws.
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November 4, 2009, 8:43 pmMartinned says:
Given that we’ve been free since several decades before the Jamestown settlement, I think we’re OK.
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November 4, 2009, 8:44 pmArthurKirkland says:
By this standard, the United States of America — which incarcerates people for marijuana offenses, periodically experiences a flare-up concerning flag-burning, arrests college students for drinking beer (and once attempted to enforce Prohibition), and recently witnessed the election, as a state attorney general, of a man who argues homosexual conduct should be unlawful — is far from a “free” country. Not a bad point. Sounds like we have some improving to do.
But that has little to do with gun registration. Anyone who confuses gun registration with gun prohibition can reasonably be considered a gun nut.
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November 4, 2009, 9:00 pmNotACanadian says:
Anon circa 1954
Not sure why allowing desegregation is a victory for “liberty.” This is a right that happens to be included in the U.S. Constitution, but a perfectly reasonable nation could decide not to permit desegregation. In fact, it’s still not clear if the U.S. Constitution permits school desegregation, and the Supreme Court will be considering the issue soon.
In short, some people may consider segregation to reflect principles of “liberty,” in that they don’t have to fear racial minorities. I know that I feel safer living in a city that has strict segregation laws.
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November 4, 2009, 9:07 pmRKV says:
“In fact, it’s still not clear if the U.S. Constitution permits non-militia individuals to own guns, and the Supreme Court will be considering the issue soon.”
Was that a deliberate attempt to confuse, or are you just completely out of touch with reality.
The plain text of the 2nd Amendment says otherwise, and the court in Heller agrees.
“The Second Amendment protects an individual right to possess a firearm unconnected with service in a militia, and to use that arm for traditionally lawful purposes, such as self-defense within the home.” Scalia writing for the majority, DC. v. Heller (btw, that’s the text of the holding, and not the dicta I’m quoting).
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November 4, 2009, 9:08 pmNorthern Dave says:
Historically, AK, the registration is a precursor to seizure and prohibition. The Canadian situation IMHO relates more to the vast bureaucratic expense of a program that registers the hunting and varmint rifles of law-abiding citizens (being Canadians we grumbled and registered). $2 Billion for us is a sizeable amount of Public money and the 1/4 Billion a year continuance fee is simply unwarranted and could be put to much better use elsewhere (Health Care, for example :-) ).
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November 4, 2009, 9:10 pmWaste93 says:
The difference is that the Bill of Rights makes no mention of your car or dog. It does mention arms. A better anology would be the First Ammendment. Should you have to undergo a background check, get approval from the government, wait seven days, etc to buy a Bible? Or get a copy of the newspaper?
Now that may sound a little silly but it wouldn’t be a stretch that religion has caused more death in the history of mankind than a firearm has.
Seriously, take the list of firearms requirements, laws, and restrictions and substitute relgion or press and see how many of those laws now look ‘reasonable’.
Also ‘registration’ is not about safety. Gun registries rarely help in solving crimes. However they are required prior to a ban. That is what happened in NYC. It started as a ‘registration’. Later those lists were used to know who had the weapons so they could be banned if I remember correctly.
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November 4, 2009, 9:12 pmKen Mitchell says:
“Democracy” is two wolves and one sheep voting on what to have for dinner. It’s a TERRIBLE form of government. The United States is a Representative Republic.
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November 4, 2009, 9:13 pmKen Mitchell says:
Irrelevant, since 10USC311 defines the “militia” as being all able-bodied law-abiding males between the ages of 17 and 45 who are (or who have declared an intention to become) citizens, and females who are members of the National Guard. Further, the maximum age limit is waived for retired military or members of the National Guard. Former military personnel and all National Guard are members of the “organized militia”; everyone else is in the “unorganized militia”. Given recent Court decisions concerning gender-linked occupations, I’m fairly sure (even though I am not a lawyer) that women aged 17 to 45 who wanted to assert that they are included in the “unorganized militia” would win such a case.
So even if a gun control advocate wanted to assert that membership in the “militia” is required for firearms ownership, that vast majority of law-abiding citizens and legal residents would qualify.
Further, from the US vs Miller Supreme Court decision, “The signification attributed to the term, Militia, appear from the debates in the Convention, the history and legislation of Colonies and States, and the writings of approved commentators. These show plainly enough that the Militia comprised all males physically capable of acting in concert for the common defense... And further, that ordinarily when called for service these men were expected to appear bearing arms supplied by themselves and of a kind in common use at the time.”
So as a retired US Navy officer, my WWII era M-1 Garand or my AR-15 (a semi-auto version of the M-16) would both seem to qualify as “militia” rifles, and I as a militia member.
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November 4, 2009, 9:35 pmKirk Parker says:
Martinned, I guess we just ignore that little unpleasantness in the middle of the last century?
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November 4, 2009, 9:36 pmAdam Maas says:
A couple notes:
Canada does not have and never has had a ‘National Health Insurance Program”. We do have a federal mandate to the Provinces that they provide their own comprehensive Health Insurance programs. Each provincial system in independant and coverage varies quite extensively.
The Charter of Rights and Freedoms does not mandate public funding for Catholic school systems in Ontario or Protestant school systems in Quebec. It simply has a loophole permitting them as they are long-standing systems which predate the Charter by decades. At least in Ontario, the removal of provincial funding for the religious schools (including, but not limited to the Catholic systems) was actually a major election issue a couple years ago.
The Charter also doesn’t protect property rights or the right to bear arms. Canadians used to have the latter but it had eroded significantly after WW1 and WW2, much like in the UK. The Charter only came into effect in 1982 and was the brainchild of a progressive idiot manchild(Pierre Elliot Trudeau, PM from 1968–1983 apart from a 9 month interregnum, brilliantly charismatic, a womanizer who made Bill Clinton look like a boy scout, beloved of the CBC and damned near responsible for destroying the country). Needless to say, with that socialist twit implementing it, most of the Charter is pablum. We got one good thing out of it, the Non-Withstanding Clause, which allows any provincial government to tell the Feds (including the Supreme Court of Canada) to piss off on a particular matter for 5 years.
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November 4, 2009, 9:38 pmRob says:
Yeah, democracy is the worst form of government — except for all the rest. And then again, I don’t think you absorbed the fact that I don’t live in the US. I live in a constitutional monarchy.
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November 4, 2009, 9:48 pmMartinned says:
I deliberately left out the question of whether there is any scenario where US-level civilian armament would have deterred the Germans (and the French in 1795) from invading. Experience has taught me that bringing up that one usually leads to paricularly severe delusions among my interlocutors. The theory is that an armed population is necessary to stop one’s own government from becoming tyrranical, and the Dutch government has shown no signs of doing so during the last 400+ years.
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November 4, 2009, 9:51 pmnolan says:
Arthur Kirkland, a little history for you (taken from another thread/blog, but the facts I have seen many other places);
DaveH says:
September 30, 2009 at 6:10 am
A LITTLE GUN HISTORY
The first step in gun-control is registration.
In 1929, the Soviet Union established gun control. From 1929 to 1953, about 20 million dissidents, unable to defend themselves, were rounded up and exterminated.
In 1911, Turkey established gun control. From 1915 to 1917, 1.5 million Armenians, unable to defend themselves, were rounded up and exterminated.
Germany established gun control in 1938 and from 1939 to 1945, a total of 13 million Jews and others who were unable to defend themselves were rounded up and exterminated.
China established gun control in 1935. From 1948 to 1952, 20 million political dissidents, unable to defend themselves, were rounded up and exterminated
Defenseless people rounded up and exterminated in the 20th Century because of gun control: 56 million.
gun-control laws adversely affect only the law-abiding citizens
SWITZERLAND ISSUES EVERY HOUSEHOLD A GUN!
SWITZERLAND HAS THE LOWEST GUN RELATED CRIME RATE OF ANY CIVILIZED COUNTRY IN THE WORLD!
With guns, we are ‘citizens.’
Without them, we are ’subjects’.
end copy
Now, Canada’s present Gov’t is certainly benign and properly conducive for it’s subjects well-being, but think about the rise of your Islamic population and their almost inevitable installation of Sharia. We’ve got that happening here, but it won’t be tolerated too much longer, and the 2d Amend. is going to come into play here, probably sooner rather than later. It will be incredibly destructive, but in the end, We the People will prevail. If you think I’m mad (I am, but in a different connotation of the word), look to europe. There are cities whose populations can no longer walk the streets in safety, as you can now. Look up Tingbjerg, read Mark Steyn’s “America Alone” (an Canadian ex-pat who’s quite welcome here), follow Jihadwatch.org or Atalsshrugs.com. Your kids won’t be very safe walking the street, certainly not your grandkids.
“...being necessary to a free state...” implies so many things as to be staggering if all historical examples (see above for a very short list) were considered.
The peaceful existence which you enjoy is not the default condition of man-kind.
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November 4, 2009, 10:12 pmNotACanadian says:
If p is the probability of a government becoming tyrannical, I think most people would agree that 0 < p < 1.
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November 4, 2009, 10:28 pmMartinned says:
...which is supposed to tell us what, exactly?
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November 4, 2009, 10:41 pmcrank says:
These examples are not particular to your own experience, but the residents of Finland, Afghanistan, Vietnam and Iraq would beg to differ that civilian gun ownership cannot empower a populace to stand up to an invasion.
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November 4, 2009, 10:41 pmCarl from Chicago says:
Not being Canadian, perhaps it’s over-reaching for me to say this ...
But I for one would be happy for a total recall on the nation’s gun registration schemes, including for handguns. It will depend on what the parliament votes for.
But I do acknowledge an internationalist gun prohibition effort afoot, and in as much as a repeal of Canada’s registry system would repudiate that, I support such a repeal.
Natural rights and non-existent Canadian constiutional protection of arms aside, should the parliament vote to scrap this long gun registry, that would be “democracy in action.”
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November 4, 2009, 10:46 pmTweets that mention The Volokh Conspiracy » Blog Archive » The most important right to arms vote of 2009 -- Topsy.com says:
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Justinius says:
Wow, obviously posted by someone with absolutely no knowledge of the history of arms control and prohibition.
Don’t Tread On Me.
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November 4, 2009, 11:43 pmRKV says:
Ken, Are you on drugs? Anon asserts a falsehood. I prove it false with a relevant cite from Heller, and you call irrelevant; you sure as [expletive] are not a lawyer. Why waste the bandwidth with that screed?
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November 5, 2009, 12:12 amH Profrock says:
Sheesh. Ask yourself what is the purpose of licensing to begin with in this situation? I don’t license my dogs because (a) there’s no need; (b) I’m actually responsible; (c) I don’t want to pay for the expense; (d) my dogs feel their existence in my household should not be subject to license (or they’d tell me this if they could talk). ;-)
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November 5, 2009, 12:19 amBC says:
Again, if you define “freedom” down to include having to beg your own government for the means of effective self-defense.
But I grant that if you define “freedom” solely in terms of your ability to have a three-way with a gay hooker and a goat while high out of your gourd, there’s noplace like the Netherlands.
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November 5, 2009, 12:47 amKirk Parker says:
Martinned,
Who said anything about preventing that occurrence? I was just pointing out that you glossed over it as if it had never happened.
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November 5, 2009, 12:50 amJohnnyCanuck says:
Prime Minister Paul Martin ran on a platform including a “sweeping ban on handguns” in December 2005 as he was seeking re-election. The slope can get pretty slippery!
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November 5, 2009, 1:08 amCalifornio says:
Of COURSE guns can be dangerous, hence government regulation thereof– why, resistance against such a position would implicate a hidden bad intent — so what do you really want a gun for..?
Of COURSE “the pen is mightier than the sword..” — hence government regulation of speech, why.. you wouldn’t want to stir things up and jeopardize, say, universal healthcare , would you? Why, that is caring for sick people — what rational person could be against that? Big Brother loves you and seeks only to serve you — only someone mentally ill (and therefore a threat to themselves and others) would believe otherwise.
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November 5, 2009, 2:20 amThe Ronin Edge says:
Looks like you got invaded by shit-eating moonbats. Sorry to hear. I hope Canada can pull itself up by it’s boot straps and regain some measure of it’s freedom back.
An unarmed population is a population of slaves. God bless my arsenal, and God help any commie that tries to take any of it away.
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November 5, 2009, 2:20 amTim says:
Simply put, gun ownership is a right. Travel is a right. Automobile ownership is not.
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November 5, 2009, 2:36 amDoc Merlin says:
I suggest you google the Broken Windows fallacy before using that horrible line of reasoning again.
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November 5, 2009, 3:06 amDilan Esper says:
Actually, a friend of mine had a very simple and elegant solution for that line drawing problem. There IS a simple and logical place to draw that line... Crew served weapons.
You can certainly draw that line, but there’s no content in the “natural” right that gets you there. That was my point.
Further, that may not be such a great line to draw. Is a “Davy Crockett” (i.e., nuclear artillery shell that can theoretically be fired from a hand-held weapon) protected by the right to keep and bear arms?
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November 5, 2009, 3:06 amMark Jones says:
There’s no historical record of numerous governments requiring citizens to license their dogs or their cars, then confiscating those dogs or cars (usually as a prelude to using government-owned cars and dogs to murder hundreds of thousands or millions of those same citizens). Plenty of governments have done just that with regard to guns.
No government can be trusted with that information. If they don’t _know_ where all the guns are, they can’t (easily) confiscate them.
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November 5, 2009, 3:22 amDavid Newton says:
Wrong. Car ownership is just as much of a right as gun ownership. What is not a right is driving that car on a public road. That is what you must have a licence for. In the same way gun ownership is a right but carrying a gun in a public place is not a right. That is what you must have a licence for.
Where it gets ridiculous with CCW licences is where there is a clause about it being at the discretion of the local police chief or some subjective nonsense that it is possible will never be fulfilled (and might change radically depending on who occupies the office of police chief). Like a driving test the criteria for a CCW licence should be objective and once fulfilled should mean that no one can stop a person getting a CCW licence.
Once granted the only thing that should stop a person getting a CCW licence should be them no longer fulfilling one of those objective criteria. For example if a criterion is that the person applying for the CCW licence must be able to gain a certain score when shooting at a target with a given number of rounds (to make sure that people walking around with loaded firearms in public can actually shoot straight) and a person who has had a CCW licence fails a periodic re-qualification to continue to have their licence then that is a legitimate reason to pull the licence. Similarly if a criterion is that a person’s sight must reach a particular standard, or be correctable to that standard with glasses or contact lenses, and the person fails an eye test again their licence can be legitimately revoked.
Guns are deadly weapons in the wrong hands and the criteria to get a CCW licence should reflect that fact. Cars are deadly weapons in the wrong hands and the criteria to get a driving licence should reflect that fact.
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November 5, 2009, 5:42 amRobert says:
Well, I would say that the ‘natural right’ to self defense requires that I have access to whatever personal arms I feel are necessary for me TO defend myself. Which means that if I feel it is necessary to own a light machinegun or a 40mm grenade launcher to protect myself from burglars, invading redcoats, or a tyranical government, that would be my call. A logical place to draw the line is therefor the point where the weapon I desire can NOT be used by me alone.
As for the Davy Crocket, that little nuclear hand grenade was a crew served weapon as well. While I suppose a single person MIGHT be able to man handle a 105mm recoiless rocket launcher around, do you have any idea how much each of those rounds weighs? (Plus there’s the troublesome little fact that at anything but the lowest yield setting, the lethal radius is larger than the firing range... Oops.) If you want to make THAT argument, you’d be better of picking MANPADS. Shoulder fired surface to air missiles are an individual weapon and yeah, I can see THAT causing a few issues with the airline industry...
Which is why I’m not saying that this interpretation will EVER go ANYWHERE. I’m just saying that it’s a logical place to draw a line. Hell, under this interpretation, a Davy Crocket would be out, but if someone wanted to shell out a few hundred million dollars to build a suitcase nuke... Well.. One person can lug it around, right? Bill Gates would probably affort one... Mind you, the rest of us would just have to hope he’s not running the trigger mechanism with Windows.... :>
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November 5, 2009, 6:25 amRKV says:
Well Robert & Dilan, it’s actually quite a bit easier than you think. The 2nd Amendment protects those arms which a) can be borne (at a minimum, and given the historical use of letters of marque you can make a much broader case) and b) support the missions of the militia, as defined in Article 1 Section 8 of the Constitution. Namely, “To provide for calling forth the Militia to execute the Laws of the Union, suppress Insurrections and repel Invasions.” So, a .22 rifle can’t be used in any of those missions, and is not protected. On the other hand, an M249 SAW really is a necessity for those missions in the modern day, and should be protected, IF we had a court system that could read and reasonably interpret the Constitution. Read Miller for this very point (and don’t be surprised if I note that many lawyers and judges can’t be trusted to give Miller an accurate reading). After the 5–4 decision in Heller, assuming that our courts can read and reasonably interpret the Constitution is an increasingly unreasonable assumption as well. Hopefully McDonald will get 14th Amendment incorporation of the 2nd vs. the states and strict scrutiny before the present Administration can overload the Federal Courts with ends-justify-the-means jurists of the same stripe as Sotomayor.
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November 5, 2009, 7:47 amDG says:
Anything that requires others to work to provide it for me can never be a universal, natural right. I can choose to pay for it, or to obtain insurance, etc., but it cannot be a right. It is, ultimately, slavery.
A natural right such as free speech is one that no-one has to act to provide it to me. No one is required to give me a printing press. Actually it’s just the opposite — the government is required to not act and to not take away my printing press, books, pamphlets, etc., and I get to speak if I so choose.
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November 5, 2009, 8:14 amDon Gwinn, Chicago Gun Rights Examiner says:
1. It’s shocking to me that some of you apparently live in jurisdictions where you need to purchase a license just to own a vehicle. I only need a license for cars I drive on public roads. The farm truck that never leaves the farm, the race car that rides a trailer to the track or the hot rod project in the garage are no one’s business but my own and do not require licenses of any kind. Junkyard parts must be expensive where you live; the licensing requirements would be prohibitive.
2. So many of the posters defending the registry seem to be saying that it’s expensive and problematic, but that doesn’t mean that it’s not a good idea to register guns or that Canadian citizens don’t want to register their guns.
I just want to ask all of you: what is the non-compliance rate these days? Last I checked, it was massive. It always seemed to me that if otherwise law-abiding people risk prosecution by refusing to comply with a registration law, they must disagree with it pretty strongly.
3. The poster who said early on that “registration is not synonymous with confiscation” must have forgotten about Australia, the United Kingdom, New York City, California . . . well, it kind of goes on like that for awhile.
4. I’m with DG: if you can explain how you can have a right to a service provided by me, then I might buy a “right to health care.” It’s pretty ironic in my eyes that the same federal government that says you have no right to be protected by the police even if they roll up to your house while you’re being raped or murdered inside, is also trying to sell the notion that you have a “right” to have a doctor forced to render treatment.
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November 5, 2009, 8:24 amCarl Donath says:
Explain why they SHOULD.
We register cars to assure insurance thereof, safe maintenance thereof, and tag them so they are not completely anonymous on the road.
BTW: you don’t have to register a car if not used in public.
We register dogs to assure certain diseases are suppressed, and so they may be returned to the owner if they wander.
BTW: dogs are sentient beings with the intelligence of a 2-year-old; they wander.
Registering guns is useless because they are not normally used in public (usually only for self-defense), they do not wander off by themselves, are normally used on private property, do not risk public-threatening safety issues, and are not prone to transmitting nasty diseases. For all the registration that has been tried to any and all degrees, absolutely no positive benefit has come from registration.
Why spend billions on a registration scheme with no discernible benefit?
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November 5, 2009, 8:48 amIan Argent says:
Presuming that the 2A will be interpreted as requiring “strict scrutiny” for any regulation of firearms (Heller didn’t find that as the DC gun ban failed ANY level of scrutiny):
I call upon the pro-registration supporters to articulate a rationale for firearms registration AVAILABLE TO LAW ENFORCEMENT that passes strict scrutiny
Per Wikipedia it must meet the following 3 tests:
Compelling Government Interest
Narrowly Tailored
Least Restrictive Means
The available to law enforcement is important — I can, as a pro-individiual-rights person, make an argument that registering militarily-useful firearms meets the first test in case of a general call-up of the unorganized militia. But given the proven uselessness of firearms and fired-bullets registries so far, a general registry fails test 2 and probably tests 1 and 3. Simply put, there is no justification to register firearms with the law enforcement officials. The only actual uses of firearms registries have been to hassle law-abiding owners, and to confiscate firearms that have been made illegal by the stroke of the legislature’s pen.
Given that at the current time it is a violation of the 5th amendment to require a prohibited person to register a firearm; any such registration requirement would automatically fail test 1.
We already (unless the Selective Service requirement has fallen by the wayside) register the militia. That should be enough
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November 5, 2009, 8:57 amCarl Donath says:
Nope.
The 2ndA spends half its words referring to the right applying to a militia, to wit those citizens who can/will act on behalf of the community/state/nation. Those militia members are expected, insofar as practical, to be organized & equipped for defense of whatever scale of “state” needs defending. The 2ndA isn’t just about individual defense, it’s about corporate defense as well — a service provided by individuals pitching in. Ergo, “crew served” arms are applicable; if several members of the militia (that’s us common folk, expected to serve if need arises) choose to pool resources to buy a crew-served M2 or other realistic tool, what could possibly be wrong with that?
My suburban subdivision is a contained community, complete with elected leadership (HOA) & taxes (dues), which in a large-scale crisis would have to draw its defense from those who live there. In a major crisis (as we see every year some form of devastation visiting some area in this country) where local police/military are overwhelmed or stretched too thin, it would not be unreasonable for some members of the community to arrange community patrols and set up a roadblock controlling access — activities that operate with crews, not independent individuals. Would be nice if the HOA board knew that a couple homes stored M2s and a few others were ready to help out with it. 99.9999% of the time the crew-served arms would be quietly & harmlessly locked away, taken out a few times a year for the crew to practice with.
BTW: the emphasis would be on community members voluntarily choosing to buy/support such arms at their own cost and notifying local leadership of availability, NOT on the leadership having to manage & assign such tasks & expenditures as though they were somehow superior beings, lording over subjects who must beg permission to serve their community.
An individual is part of a nation. Armed self-defense IS “a well-regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state” at a sociopolitically atomic level. There is no difference between self and national defense save for scale.
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November 5, 2009, 9:31 amDanInAustin says:
That bridge was burned long ago. Why should we agree to give the government information on which guns (or which printing presses) we own, when we know that they will use that information to take them away?
The better question is: What benefit, other than a warm fuzzy feeling inside, does gun registration accomplish.
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November 5, 2009, 11:06 amDon Gwinn, Chicago Gun Rights Examiner says:
A partial list, off the top of my head:
1. Everyone who was trusting enough to register their firearms in the UK before they were told to turn them in.
2. Everyone who was trusting enough to register their firearms in Australia before they were told to turn them in.
3. Everyone who was trusting enough to register their SKS rifles in California before being told to turn them all in–despite the fact that they had been publicly, explicitly promised that the registry could never be used for confiscation purposes.
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November 5, 2009, 11:56 amStrict says:
“The problem with “Child Soldiers” is not a gun rights issue.
How many Child Soldiers you see shooting at each other in the USA?
The international anti-gun lobby is not overly concerned, because they do so little to actually help the corrupted nations in Africa and elswhere that this does occure. Half of which actually have restrictive gun laws. The problems are far deeper than even enforcing the laws they have. You have defective, corrupt Rebels fighting against defective and corrupt govt’s.”
I think you are generally right, except that I disagree that IANSA is not concerned about child soldiers.
I understand it’s not a gun “rights” issue. That wasn’t my point. My point was that we should test our assumptions underlying the oft stated equation that gun possession is merely an extension or express of a greater self-defense principle. Oftentimes, and especially in the case of child soldiers, gun possession endangers rather than protects the gun possessor, and gun possession restricts rather than expands the gun possessor’s liberty.
And not just child soldiers, but children involved in drug cartels as well, in Jamaica and Columbia. They are better off — in terms of safety and freedom — by refusing to take the guns handed to them.
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November 5, 2009, 12:39 pmbruce says:
Sorry to all, but this talk of guns misses the vital point. (And I’m a gun owner.)
Read this: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/life/health/h1n1-swine-flu/private-clinic-patients-jump-the-line-for-flu-shot/article1347746/
In Canada it seems that using the fruits of your labor — let alone a gun, to protect yourself & family is cause for the government’s concern.
We are well past any thought of ‘self defense’ if the government decides who can, and cannot, get a (potentially) life saving injection. Cling to your (Canadian) gun all you want, you are a slave, albeit armed...
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November 5, 2009, 1:05 pmWaste93 says:
Strict,
The problem is that most of those child soldiers are being armed by the government or groups being supported by the government. The IANSA is trying to ban civilian ownership of firearms. This does nothing for the child soldier issue and leaves the rest of the people disarmed and told to ‘trust the government’. Sorry, governments don’t have a very good track record.
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November 5, 2009, 1:18 pmDilan Esper says:
Which is why I’m not saying that this interpretation will EVER go ANYWHERE. I’m just saying that it’s a logical place to draw a line.
Personally, I think the obsessions of some Second Amendment supporters with bright lines and natural rights could kill the right to keep and bear arms.
A much better approach is to posit that the Second Amendment permits regulation of arms, but does not prohibit regulations that are tantamount to prohibition and thus abridge the right to keep and bear them. This is consistent with the Second Amendment’s text. Then, courts can draw lines where needed to ensure that overly-intrusive regulations are struck down. That’s a lot more mundane than lofty talk about natural rights, and it requires entrusting the courts to protect our rights (as we do with speech and other rights), but it’s much more likely to result in actual, substantive protections of people’s right to arm themselves.
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November 5, 2009, 1:41 pmCarl Donath says:
Shortly after writing the 2ndA, the Founding Fathers enacted the Militia Act of 1792 which _required_ militia members (males 17–45, to wit those who would normally be expected to act in defense of state) to be armed to certain minimum standards (for which each would be _paid_) and to register their availability and capability. Yes, registration is Constitutional — but only insofar as it is to identify whom the government may rely on for support in community defense, _not_ as a tool for limiting ownership.
Today that would translate to every able-bodied adult being required to own an M16 and 1000 rounds, paid $2000 compensation for that cost, and registered a la Selective Service with an additional checkbox indicating “yes, I’m armed as needed and available for service”.
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November 5, 2009, 2:27 pmDon Gwinn, Chicago Gun Rights Examiner says:
Child soldiers fail as an argument against civilian gun ownership for three reasons:
1. First, they’re not adults, and any time you try to have a discussion of the rights of adults and someone comes along with a sob story about children who went wrong supposedly by exercising that right, there’s a problem. Apples are not oranges.
If you were limited to the rights that could be safely and wisely exercised by an uneducated African child from a broken home, even the Canadian gun-control apologists would be howling in outrage.
2. Second, they’re not civilians. They’re soldiers, usually conscripts. They’re stuck in a horrible situation, but they’re not civilian gun owners by a long shot.
3. Third, they’re not gun owners. I notice that the person who brought this red herring out for display was careful to say “possession,” but that doesn’t get you a free ride. These are children conscripted into ragtag “armies” and issued weapons only when it’s certain that they are too fanatical, too frightened, or too wasted to be a threat to their masters. They’re nothing like American or Canadian soldiers, much less American or Canadian civilian gun owners. There’s no valid comparison to be made here.
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November 5, 2009, 2:50 pmepeeist says:
Some people have quoted me (thanks, I think!), I’ll try to give a blanket response.
I am American, and see the right to bear arms as a fundamental American right — but one which, like other rights, is for better or worse subject to Constitutional amendment (I’m not saying I want that, I’m saying it’s possible, just as with Prohibition). I see the right to bear arms as requiring the right to own arms. I don’t see it as requiring a right not to register (registration may be objectionable for other reasons, but it’s not fundamental).
I don’t, however, see the right to bear arms as a fundamental human right in the sense that any society without such a right is morally objectionable. I think it makes sense as a check on government power, but a country without that right is not ipso facto repressive.
I do see freedom of religious belief (NOT necessarily religious practice, e.g. the horrible things some people do to female children), speech, etc. as fundamental human rights. The right to self-defense is NOT synonymous with the right to bear arms in my view (incidentally, read EV’s prior post about U.S. jurisdictions banning/restriction non-lethal weapons, i.e. it’s okay to kill but you can’t choose to do less, and then tell me how “free” the U.S. is re weapons).
I (and others) have made the spectrum argument, e.g. with some exceptions most people (including me) would consider nuclear and biochemical warfare weapons, even if usable by one person and not a crew, as not protected, because of the mass murder (or accident) potential. High explosives and machineguns a similar argument (though I’m not sure I agree, it’s further along the spectrum of mass harm possible than a handgun).
As for registration and confiscation not being synonymous, they aren’t, use some logic. If you’re afraid that registration is a first step, and you object for that reason, or object to registration itself, or whatever, say so (and that may be a rational objection in some circumstances). Don’t falsely claim that non-equivalent things (registration and confiscation) are equivalent, because they’re obviously not.
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November 5, 2009, 4:14 pmReynald says:
A modern democracy protects minority rights. Canada inherited the right of private firearms ownership with the British North America Act (1867). Firearms ownership predates our earliest settlement under both the English and French Crowns. Urbanites, ignorant of our history and historic firearms culture, have been easy dupes of the anti-sport shooting politicians and their lobbies. In the past the Liberal Party of Canada has cynically turned that urban ignorance into votes. Fortunately, the majority of Canadians now recognise the long gun registry for the fraud it is. Hence, the majority vote in the Commons to end the long gun registry on November 4th 2009!
Registration IS the prelude to confiscation. That is the Canadian experience. The Firearms Act at a stroke listed as prohibited about 58% of all handguns as well as semi-automatic rifles of a ‘military’ appearance. The intent was to grab as many firearms as possible. The Liberal platform states they will further limit private ownership by extending the prohibited list, outlawing ALL remaining handguns, by outlawing ALL semi-automatic firearms (probably also ALL pump actions) when next they form the government. So much for the claims that registration DOES NOT lead to confiscation. The Liberal platform can be carried out via Orders in Council thus bypassing Parliament.
Suffice to say, the Liberal leadership have learned nothing from the Registry boondoggle. They have not acknowledged their sins and continue to offer Canadians more of a failed program as the only choice.
We have yet to see a national registry of those barred from firearms ownership by either felony convictions or mental incompetency. Nor is there a national registry of sexual deviants. Surely these registries would contribute to a safer society.
The question of child soldiers has nothing to do with this issue!
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November 5, 2009, 4:30 pmReynald says:
SYBIL,
You can own a car and drive it on private property without having a licence or registration. To own a gun, I MUST be licensed as an individual AND have a registration certificate for EACH firearm I own. When I hunt I must carry on my person my Firearms Licence, the registration certificate for each firearm with me, my Provincial Outdoors Card with a valid Small Game stamp plus a separate tag for the bear, turkey, moose, deer or elk I am hunting. I pay for each of these items. In addition I have paid to take two firearms courses as well as a wild turkey course (required to qualify to purchase a turkey tag!
I am a supporting member of the Ontario Federation of Anglers & Hunters, my local gun club and two national umbrella associations. How does this stack up to your situation with a car?
I support personal licensing to ensure competency, safer sport and to keep firearms out of the hands of criminals and the mentally incompetent. I oppose long gun registration because it does not provide a safer society and has in fact failed on all fronts. Wishing it so does not make it so. Registration has yet to result in one conviction and we have registered handguns for 75 years and long guns and crossbows since 1996!
Rank and file police do not support the registry as opposed to their political bosses, the Chiefs. What law officer would risk their life on a registry that lists perhaps half of all firearms, is rife with errors and is outrageously expensive as well as having NO PROVABLE worth?
If firearms registration does not result in a safer society then we must examine the real motives of the political parties that promote the idea. It seems to have more to do with control of citizens than it does public safety and the protection of minority rights!
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November 5, 2009, 5:16 pmDilan Esper says:
Yes, registration is Constitutional — but only insofar as it is to identify whom the government may rely on for support in community defense, _not_ as a tool for limiting ownership.
I don’t really disagree with this, but it can mean a couple of things.
If it means that registration requirements that effectively prevent people from keeping and bearing arms are unconstitutional, that is correct.
But if it means that otherwise not-particularly-burdensome registration requirements might be unconstitutional because deep in their hearts, the legislators really were not intending to regulate the militia but were rather motivated by other motivations, that’s not correct, because it requires a level of mind-reading that courts don’t possess.
Registration is constitutional as long as it doesn’t prevent people from exercising their right to keep and bear arms, BECAUSE the framers fully understood that gun registration did not impinge on the right to keep and bear arms, as evidenced by their own registration requirements for the militia. But registration as a pretext to prohibit is unconstitutional.
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November 5, 2009, 5:19 pmRKV says:
Dilan, the white males aged 17–45 were what was registered. Not their muskets. And its a right of the people, not a right of the militia, btw. The modern history of registration followed by confiscation ought to be enough for us to figure out what’s wrong with the picture.
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November 5, 2009, 11:42 pmDon Gwinn, Chicago Gun Rights Examiner says:
RKV, if you help establish that the Illinois FOID card is Constitutional, you can never be my friend.
Ever.
Just thought it was only fair that you should know.
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November 6, 2009, 12:25 amDilan Esper says:
Dilan, the white males aged 17–45 were what was registered. Not their muskets. And its a right of the people, not a right of the militia, btw. The modern history of registration followed by confiscation ought to be enough for us to figure out what’s wrong with the picture.
There is no doubt, though, that the framers would not have thought that the commanders of the militia had a right to know who had what weapons if they wished to know it. That, after all, is part and parcel of regulating a militia.
As for assertions about “registration followed by confiscation”, this is complete and utter BS in any number of ways. Many, many societies have gun registries and have not confiscated weapons. Further, the fact that a government power might be misused is NOT an argument that it is unconstitutional, absent actual misuse. The fact that some arrests are arbitrary does not mean that the constitution prohibits all arrests. It does prohibit arbitrary ones.
Similarly, the Constitution prohibits mass confiscation of weapons, and it prohibits registration as a pretext for mass confiscation. But it doesn’t prohibit registration which is not a pretext for mass confiscation.
Part of the problem here is that some gun rights advocates are simply paranoid and delusional. They think it is impossible for a government to register their weapons and NOT confiscate them. But whatever the (little) merit of that view as a political or sociological matter, it has NOTHING to do with interpreting the Constitution. The Constitution permits many things, including gun regulation, that paranoid delusional people think will lead to inevitable abuse.
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November 6, 2009, 1:40 pmDon Gwinn, Chicago Gun Rights Examiner says:
I agree that the Constitution doesn’t forbid a measure because it, to use your term, might be misused. Whether the Constitution actually forbids registration of firearms I’ll leave for another time.
On the other hand, the fact that the Constitution does not forbid a policy doesn’t mean that it’s a good idea, and after all, we’re talking about Canada here. I doubt they care whether our Constitution forbids their registry. :)
As for your dismissal of the demonstrated link between registration and confiscation, we may just have to agree to disagree. If you can look at the history on that one and conclude that registration is not problematic, you’re seeing something I’m not.
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November 6, 2009, 2:00 pmDilan Esper says:
As for your dismissal of the demonstrated link between registration and confiscation, we may just have to agree to disagree. If you can look at the history on that one and conclude that registration is not problematic, you’re seeing something I’m not.
Don:
There’s a wide gulf between “not problematic” and “always leads to confiscation”. Gun registration occupies a space somewhere in that gulf.
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November 6, 2009, 4:59 pmDon Gwinn, Chicago Gun Rights Examiner says:
I may have been skimming too much, but I haven’t noticed many people (actually, I haven’t noticed any) who have said that registration always leads to confiscation on this thread.
What a lot of people have said is that it often does. I said that, and I gave several examples off the top of my head.
You can’t claim the gulf between two extreme ends of a spectrum and yet push me to one end of it.
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November 6, 2009, 5:06 pmLuis says:
Wendy Cukier sux!
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November 6, 2009, 6:35 pmDilan Esper says:
Don:
“Often” lead to confiscation? How often is often?
The ONLY claim you can make is that several governments have used gun registries as a tool to confiscate guns. That’s it. You can’t even establish that confiscation wouldn’t have occurred anyway even without a registry. Indeed, many, many governments have confiscated guns without any registry (far more than which have used a registry).
Meanwhile, many, many governments have gun registries and have never confiscated.
This is black helicopter stuff. Gun rights are a wonderful and important thing, and the Second Amendment means what it says, but there is, unfortunately, a certain type of gun rights advocate who really and truly has convinced himself that the jackboots are going to come in and take all their guns if even one inch is conceded on any gun control measure. It is stupid, it is delusional, and it makes the entire gun rights movement look like a bunch of cranks (which is quite unfair).
If you get to the political conditions necessary for gun confiscation to occur, the lack of a gun registry isn’t going to be a very big hurdle.
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November 6, 2009, 8:04 pmIan Argent says:
The thing is — what is a registry of firearms good for, except for confiscation?
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November 6, 2009, 8:58 pmDilan Esper says:
The thing is — what is a registry of firearms good for, except for confiscation?
This confuses legislative purpose with legislative result.
There are many legitimate purposes why one might have a registry (most importantly that it could assist in crime investigation, also because it theoretically makes it easier to recover stolen weapons and/or prosecute people who possess them, and it makes it easier to tax gun sales and/or ensure that licensed, regulated vendors conduct the sales). I know gun rights advocates have their responses to all of these, but those are debating points. It isn’t an objection to an otherwise constitutional legislative purpose that there is a debate as to whether the legislation will actually work. That’s a call the legislature gets to make.
I should also say that even on the merits, gun rights advocates are way too smug on these questions. There’s absolutely no way anyone can claim with a straight face that having a gun registry will never, ever help solve a crime. Of course it will, if you give it enough time. It may not solve enough crimes to justify whatever one thinks the intrusion is on law-abiding gun owners, etc., but anyone who says “it’ll never solve a crime” is either not thinking clearly or is someone who is so paranoid about the government taking his guns that he won’t admit to himself what the government is actually doing.
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November 7, 2009, 2:33 amIan Argent says:
I have yet to actually be shown a case where the various gun/bullet registries have been the critical evidence in a prosecution. In fact, I’m given to understand that one of the reasons that Canada is attempting to scrap their long-gun registry is that it has not produced ANY convictions (outside of violations of the registry), making the upkeep a waste of money.
As long as it is a violation of a criminal’s 5th amendment rights to be forced to register an illegal firearm (US v Haynes 1968 — See Clayton Cramer’s article on the subject, there is little point to a registry of firearms.Until that decision (8–1 at SCOTUS, mind) lack of registration cannot be used to prosecute a firearms offense. Thus, a firearms registry only tells you who had the legal firearm when it was registered.
For a registry to be at all effective at tracing firearms, all transfers must go through it. This would cripple private sales.
Since I postulated that any firearms regulation is subject to strict scrutiny, a firearms registry would fail Least Restricive and Narrowly Targeted — making it ... unconstitutional.
Fails least restrictive — the firearm owner can register their weapon with the manufacturer for warranty purposes and keep records of their firearms to turn over to law enforcement if it is stolen — at which point it can be databased like any other stolen serialized item. Fails Narrowly Targeted since only law-abiding citizens are affected.
And I still don’t see the Compelling Government Interest; we don’t register any other common weapon (knives, baseball bats, swords, bows, crossbows) and I would submit that we can’t.
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November 7, 2009, 10:16 amKirk Parker says:
Dilan,
Once is too much, in my book.
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November 7, 2009, 6:16 pmDilan Esper says:
I have yet to actually be shown a case where the various gun/bullet registries have been the critical evidence in a prosecution.
This is stacking the deck. Evidence is cumulative. Rarely is any one piece “critical”. Gun registration evidence is, however, used all the time in jurisdictions that have it.
As long as it is a violation of a criminal’s 5th amendment rights to be forced to register an illegal firearm (US v Haynes 1968 — See Clayton Cramer’s article on the subject, there is little point to a registry of firearms.Until that decision (8–1 at SCOTUS, mind) lack of registration cannot be used to prosecute a firearms offense. Thus, a firearms registry only tells you who had the legal firearm when it was registered.
You know, there isn’t this sharp division in the world between “criminals” and “non-criminals”. Lots of people commit crimes with legal, registered weapons. Lots of people use illegal weapons too– gun rights advocates are completely correct about this. But the fact that a registry might not help investigate category 2 crimes doesn’t say anything about its value with respect to category 1 crimes.
For a registry to be at all effective at tracing firearms, all transfers must go through it. This would cripple private sales.
Boo hoo.
Since I postulated that any firearms regulation is subject to strict scrutiny
You can posit it, but I can also posit the existence of unicorns. In the real world, the right to keep and bear arms is subject to traditionally accepted regulations as described in Scalia’s Heller opinion.
Once is too much, in my book
One abuse does not make something unconstitutional.
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November 7, 2009, 10:13 pmIan Argent says:
I would expect Strict Scrutiny for regulations pertaining to an individual right (9–0 at SCOTUS). Much more likely than unicorns.
As for criminal use of legally-owned firearms; that’s an fraction of the criminal use of illegal firearms; and there is a vastly larger pool of legally owned firearms than there is illgally-owned firearms. Using your terms, type 1 crimes do not justify registration (especially since they are, contra most TV shows, not hard to solve. Most domestic violence offendors are easily tracked down).
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November 8, 2009, 5:43 pmDilan Esper says:
I would expect Strict Scrutiny for regulations pertaining to an individual right (9–0 at SCOTUS).
SCOTUS barely (5–4 margin) recognized the existence of a meaningful right. And the constitutional language itself discusses the right in the context of regulation / discipline of the militia.
I will assure you, you are more likely to see a gay president in your lifetime than you are to the Supreme Court apply strict scrutiny to the Second Amendment rights.
Using your terms, type 1 crimes do not justify registration (especially since they are, contra most TV shows, not hard to solve. Most domestic violence offendors are easily tracked down).
True enough, but not all type 1 crimes are easy to solve domestic violence cases. For instance, there are the cases of junior taking daddy’s registered gun and shooting someone in a gang dispute or during a liquor store robbery.
Again, I don’t deny that there are plenty of gun crimes that registration won’t help solve in any way. So stipulated. But there are significant numbers of gun crimes where gun registration evidence has been admitted as relevant evidence in the trial (and surely many that did not go to trial).
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November 8, 2009, 8:33 pmRaoul says:
Wow what a deal, 200 jobs for two billion dollars and counting. We could retire them for $50,000 per year each and get the annual budget down to Ten million dollars with no hidden costs. This program would not survive a cost/benefit analysis and that tells the whole story of this boondoggle.
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November 10, 2009, 2:54 pmRaoul says:
Registration must have a purpose. It must contribute to greater public safety. The proof of improved public safety remains a wish with NO legitimate science to support the claim. Expensive public programs like a universal gun registry should only be continued if they pass a cost/benefit analysis and if it proves to result in greater public safety. The Canadian registry has failed on all counts. Only the anti-gun zealots hold to the line that registration is useful. Using your logic we would go back to licensing radios and televisions.
As to the reality. You can purchase a car without a license and use it on private property. A Canadian cannot purchase a firearm legally without having a valid license. He cannot possess a firearm without a valid certificate for the firearm. So you see it is not the same. One has a choice to obtain a license while the other MUST have a license.
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November 10, 2009, 3:23 pmRaoul says:
In Canada crossbows are registered like a firearm. We had one instance of a female lawyer being killed by her husband with a crossbow. You can immediately see how this contributes to increased public safety! The Canadian registry is incomplete, rife with errors, is easily hacked, does not result in any convictions and is ruinously expensive. As America is a friend, we would be willing to give you the program for a small consideration. We would want it kept in New Brunswick as it means Liberal Party votes. Think of it the same way as outsourcing call centres to India. Call Prime Minister Harper today and ask that it be part of NAFTA.
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November 10, 2009, 3:39 pmJustinius says:
Dilan, if you get your wish and personal arms are ever confiscated in this country, I respectfully request that you come and get mine.
Don’t Tread On Me.
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November 11, 2009, 12:22 amRaoul says:
Rob’s comments are common among younger Canadians and those newly immigrated. They give life to the myths surrounding firearms in Canadian society. The Constitution and Bill of Rights are not definitive statements. These are living documents that do not exclude the unwritten rights of Canadians.
The right to own firearms was listed first as a right in the English Bill of Rights, 1689. Prior to then it had only been an obligation. That right passed to Canada with the British North America Act in 1867. Only in the last 40 years has that right been attacked by successive Liberal governments. Liberals have denied the history of gun rights, denied the historic record of a Canadian gun culture and vilified those millions of Canadians that are part of that culture of firearms ownership. Liberals quickly learned to milk votes from the ignorant and fearful among us
After 75 years of firearms registration we have yet to see one criminal conviction for violent crime that is a direct result of the Firearms Act or handgun registration.
The Firearms Act has not been proven to reduce suicide or result in a safer society. The Meyerthorpe killings and the Montreal massacre would not have been prevented by the Firearms Act. Nor has the Act done anything to curb gun violence in our large cities or to reduce the availability of illegal firearms to criminals.
Statistically, gun crime has always been rather insignificant overall. In the 60s we were awash with surplus World War II arms, including fully automatic Brens, and endless cheap surplus ammunition. Yet, there were no instances of mass killings and rampant gang warfare. All this and NO SIGNIFICANT GUN CONTROL LEGISLATION!
What has changed is the fact that police no longer control the urban gangs, smuggling or drugs. Politicians use isolated outrages with firearms to pursue what amounts to cultural cleansing. Media give the perpetrators their place in history thus encouraging copycats. Politicians of the left rather than tackling the real problems of crime and the underlying social problems have targeted the law abiding in their rush to appear to be doing something.
The result is a Firearms Act that prosecutes citizens for lapsed licenses while confiscating their firearms. The Act is powerless to prevent gun crimes, reduce the suicide rate or produce a safer society. Fortunately, the majority of Canadians see the Firearms Act for the boondoggle it is and have called for the end to the long gun registry.
Preventing the tyranny of the majority while protecting the rights of the minority is always a challenge for a democracy. Judging from history and current statements the Liberal Party, their political allies and lobbies cannot be entrusted with that task.
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November 15, 2009, 12:05 pm