After McDonald, and the newly enacted Chicago handgun ordinance, people are again turning to whether and when gun license fees are unconstitutional. I’ve heard some argue that under existing constitutional rules applicable to other rights — especially the First Amendment — any fee for the exercise of a constitutional right is per se unconstitutional. But rightly or wrongly, that turns out not to be the case. Here’s an excerpt from my Implementing the Right to Keep and Bear Arms in Self-Defense article, with most of the citations omitted; see PDF pp. 100-102 to find all the citations.
Taxes on guns and ammunition … would be substantial burdens [which I argue should be unconstitutional -EV] if they materially raised the cost of armed self-defense. A $600 tax proposed by Cook, Ludwig & Samaha, justified by an assertion that “keeping a handgun in the home is associated with at least $600 per year in externalities,” is one such example. “The poorly financed [self-defense] of little people,” like their “poorly financed causes,” deserves constitutional protection as much as the self-defense of those who can afford technologically sophisticated new devices or high new taxes. (See Martin v. City of Struthers, 319 U.S. 141, 146 (1943) (striking down ban on door-to-door solicitation, partly on the grounds that “[d]oor to door distribution of circulars is essential to the poorly financed causes of little people”); see also City of Ladue v. Gilleo, 512 U.S. 43, 56 (1994) (striking down ban on display of signs at one’s home, partly on the grounds that “[r]esidential signs are an unusually cheap and convenient form of communication. Especially for persons of modest means or limited mobility, a yard or window sign may have no practical substitute.”).) This is true whether the tax … is imposed on gun owners directly, or on gun sellers or manufacturers, just as a restriction on abortion can be a substantial burden even if it’s imposed on doctors and not on the women who are getting the abortions.
High gun taxes should remain presumptively impermissible even if they are based on some (doubtless controversially calculated) estimate of the public costs imposed by the average handgun: The average takes into account both the very low cost stemming from guns that are always properly used by their owners, and the very high cost stemming from guns that are used in crime. The law-abiding owners thus are not just being required to “internalize the full social costs of their choices,” even if you take into account as a “cost” the possibility that any gun will be stolen by a criminal. They are also being required to internalize the social costs of choices made by criminal users of other guns — much as if, for instance, all speakers were charged a tax that would be used to compensate those libeled by a small subset of speakers.
Nonetheless, some modest taxes might not amount to substantial burdens, as a review of taxes and fees on other constitutional rights illustrates. Taxes based on the content of speech are unconstitutional, regardless of their magnitude. But this is a special case of the principle that discrimination based on certain kinds of characteristics — race, sex, religiosity, or the content or viewpoint of speech — is unconstitutional. Setting aside these special areas of constitutionally forbidden discrimination, and setting aside poll taxes, which were constitutional until the Twenty-Fourth Amendment forbade them, other kinds of taxes, fees, and indirect costs imposed on the exercise of constitutional rights are often permissible.
The government may require modest content-neutral fees for demonstration permits or charitable fundraising permits, at least if the fees are tailored to defraying the costs of administering constitutionally permissible regulatory regimes. E.g., Sullivan v. City of Augusta, 511 F.3d 16, 35–36 (1st Cir. 2007) (demonstrations); National Awareness Found. v. Abrams, 50 F.3d 1159, 1167 (2d Cir. 1995) (charitable fundraising); Stonewall Union v. City of Columbus, 931 F.2d 1130, 1137 (6th Cir. 1991) (demonstrations).
The same is true for marriage license fees and filing fees for political candidates (though the Court has held that the right to run for office is protected by the First Amendment). E.g., Boynton v. Kusper, 494 N.E.2d 135, 138 (Ill. 1986) (striking down a $10 tax on marriage licenses, aimed at funding services for victims of domestic violence, but stressing in dictum that this part of the license fee “has no relation to the county clerk’s service of issuing, sealing, filing, or recording the marriage license”); D’Antoni v. Comm’r, N.H. Dep’t of Health & Human Servs., 917 A.2d 177, 183 (N.H. 2006) (upholding a $38 marriage license fee because the fee was less than the “incidental expenses related to issuing the licenses”).The same is doubtless true of costs involved in getting permits to build on your own property, a right protected by the Takings Clause….
At the same time, when a cost is high enough to impose a substantial obstacle to the exercise of a right for a considerable number of people, it is unconstitutional. This is likely also true when a cost goes materially beyond the cost of administering the otherwise permissible regulatory scheme, as several federal circuit court cases hold and some U.S. Supreme Court cases suggest. See, e.g., Sullivan v. City of Augusta, 511 F.3d 16, 38 (1st Cir. 2007); [ACLU v. White, 692 F.Supp.2d 986 (N.D. Ill. 2010) (striking down $1000 registration fee for lobbyists because "legislative lobbying is an activity protected by the First Amendment, and a state may only charge a fee as a precondition for lobbying where that fee is 'calculated to defray the expense' of lobbying regulation")]. And if a law substantially burdens rightholders who are relatively poor, an exemption would likely be constitutionally required, as it has been with regard to permit fees for speakers and candidates. See Lubin v. Panish, 415 U.S. 709, 718–19 (1974) (requiring exemption from filing fee for indigent political candidates); Cent. Fla. Nuclear Freeze Campaign v. Walsh, 774 F.2d 1515, 1523 (11th Cir. 1985) (same as to demonstration permit fee).
I acknowledge that any such regime necessarily creates linedrawing problems and poses the danger that a genuinely substantial burden will be missed by judges who are deciding how much is too much. But, first, there is ample precedent for such tolerance for modest fees in other constitutional rights contexts, and it seems neither likely nor normatively appealing for the courts to conclude that the right to bear arms is more protected than these other rights. Second, the caselaw from those other areas can provide guideposts for the linedrawing process. And third, the caselaw from those other areas (as well as the general logic of the substantial burden threshold) can provide justification for a constitutional requirement that poor applicants be exempted from fees — say, fees that dramatically increase the cost of a new gun, or that are required for periodic reregistration of an old gun — that are substantial for them even if relatively minor for others.
frankcross says:
Well, I guess this makes sense except for the part of internalizing the costs of guns. There’s no conceivable individual specific tax here. Nor is there for lobbying. The same fee is charged, regardless of whether a lobbyist requires repeated enforcement or not. You have to take an average, if you are going to accept the internalization theory. I assume the fee for demonstration permits is constant, though demonstrations may impose widely variant costs on government.
July 3, 2010, 5:36 pmGaunilo says:
Are you aware of any fees on the right to publish, speak (outside of a government owned or controlled venue) worship, or petition the government for redress of grievances?
July 3, 2010, 5:39 pmkg2v says:
OK, so how about say NYC’s $300+/3years PLUS $90+ fingerprinting fee – for BOTH a longarms AND Pistol Permit (so, have a pistol and a longarm, pay to be printed TWICE, and permit fees – TWICE)
July 3, 2010, 5:55 pmBleh says:
I think that makes sense. I’m not a gun-enthusiast, but I’m also not an opponent. As such, I wouldn’t be in favor of a high tax on guns.
But it does seem that adding guns to society increases the costs, at least somewhat, of things such as crime prevention. Therefore it may make some sense to have a small tax or fee associated with the purchase of weapons in order to offset those expenses. Obviously, though, the purpose of the tax should only be to offset specific and enumerated costs associated with weapons, and the tax should not be set with the intent of making the cost of weapons prohibitive.
One thing I would be interested to know: From the libertarian (or any RTKBA supporter for that matter) perspective, where should the line be drawn on what arms people may keep and bare? Obviously there’s a large range from nuclear weapons down to blunt instruments… What goes into the decision process on which arms should be prohibited? I, for example, am hesitant to say that assault weapons should be legal–for general use–but that strikes me as line-drawing and was just wondering if other supporters of the RTKBA engage in line-drawing as well.
July 3, 2010, 5:57 pmBleh says:
I think it depends on the external costs that exercising those rights place on society, as well as the ease with which a fee can be collected for exercising those rights… So if you want to speak in your home the costs are pretty low, and they’d be virtually impossible to collect. But if you want to have a parade through downtown, they’re high and requiring a permit is easy, so therefore there are fees associated with exercising the right in that particular manner. Similarly, if you want to build a church to worship, I’m sure you are required to follow building codes and zoning restrictions. Petition the government for redress of grievances – well, taxes are collected to fund the government and pay government employees salaries, so I’m sure part of that goes towards funding citizens rights to petition — it would cumbersome and costly to require a fee anytime someone petitions so instead they likely spread that costs out (via the income tax) in certain circumstances and in other circumstances, a fee may be charged (court fees for example).
The issue is that the costs of some of those rights are easy to place (via fee) on the specific people exercising the rights, and some are so spread out that a general tax has be collected in order to support the right.
In this case, something is being sold in commerce, so it’s pretty easy to put a small tax on a weapon to help offset the costs associated with the possible misuse of that weapon.
July 3, 2010, 6:13 pmReasoner says:
The only reason registration is needed is because of criminal misuse. If law abiding citizens should pay for criminal misuse, then we should also get credit for the crime we prevent.
So now the gun banners have one of their primary strategies. Make the registration bureaucracy as wasteful and expensive as possible. More expense means fewer gun owners and therefore less political support. If the government thinks registration is worth the money then it should just pay for it itself.
But registration is nothing compared to the danger of Obama getting re-elected and replacing one of the Heller majority so that Obama’s justices can overrule Heller and wipe the 2nd Amendment out of the constitution. A vote for Obama is a vote to wipe out the 2nd Amendment.
July 3, 2010, 6:15 pmRKV says:
If we’re looking for original public meaning, we might want to examine our history. The Militia Act of 1792 required all able-bodied male citizens ages 18-45 to own arms suitable for their militia service – specifically, pistols and swords, espontoons (pikes), rifles or muskets. So, during the period of the founding generation Americans were “taxed” to require them to own arms. And militia service was mandatory for up to a maximum of three months a year (for which you were paid the same rate as soldiers in the standing army). You had to pay fines if you failed to appear, showed up without required equipment (ammunition, bayonet, knapsack, etc.). And your militia weapons could not be taken to enforce a judgment. That’s a far cry from being taxed to keep citizens from owning arms.
July 3, 2010, 6:17 pmtired of blogs says:
Regarding the right to publish, the copyright office charges $35 or $50 for a basic copyright, depending on whether you file electronically or physically.
Registering for non-profit status (501c3) with the IRS carries a fee, either $400 or $850 depending on average revenue over time.
July 3, 2010, 6:17 pmElliot says:
I don’t have an answer for your question, but I do thing use of the term “assault weapon” is very misleading. Nobody really knows what that means. To have a reasonable discussion, one would have to specify the features of weapons under discussion.
July 3, 2010, 6:21 pmDr. Weevil says:
Bleh: “But it does seem that adding guns to society increases the costs, at least somewhat, of things such as crime prevention.”
Is that true? Looking at the murder rates in cities that ban virtually all private gun ownership, it looks like putting guns in the hands of thousands of sane, law-abiding, adult citizens in those cities will in fact lower the cost of crime prevention, allowing the mayors to lay off some of their policemen and crime lab technicians. There would also quite likely be huge savings in medical costs: I imagine a high percentage of people who show up in emergency rooms with multiple gunshot wounds are uninsured. The amounts (hypothetically) saved might easily dwarf the cost of paying bureaucrats to register guns.
Which raises an important question:
If complying with the latest SC decision in fact saves money (as well as lives), should these cities start paying their (sane, law-abiding, adult) citizens to keep and bear firearms?
July 3, 2010, 6:27 pmFiftycal says:
Strict scrutiny should require that there be a PURPOSE for a law limiting a fundamental right. The Center for Disease Control did a study and in summary said “During 2000–2002, the Task Force on Community Preventive Services (the Task Force), an independent nonfederal task force, conducted a systematic review of scientific evidence regarding the effectiveness of firearms laws in preventing violence, including violent crimes, suicide, and unintentional injury. The following laws were evaluated: bans on specified firearms or ammunition, restrictions on firearm acquisition, waiting periods for firearm acquisition, firearm registration and licensing of firearm owners, “shall issue” concealed weapon carry laws, child access prevention laws, zero tolerance laws for firearms in schools, and combinations of firearms laws. The Task Force found insufficient evidence to determine the effectiveness of any of the firearms laws or combinations of laws reviewed on violent outcomes. (Note that insufficient evidence to determine effectiveness should not be interpreted as evidence of ineffectiveness.) This report briefly describes how the reviews were conducted, summarizes the Task Force findings, and provides information regarding needs for future research.” http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/rr5214a2.htm
Similar research has found that “ballistic fingerprinting” required by DC and other states had not solved ONE crime. And cost millions to enforce. Also, registration of ammo purchase and in general “gun registration” schemes have NO effect on crime levels or solving crimes. Canada has spent billions to register rifles and shotguns, has gotten maybe 50% compliance and it has no practical application.
In my view, places like Chicago ($150+ to “register” a gun for a year) are simply doing so to thwart a fundamental right. Hopefully some of these issues will come up in the Palmer vs DC case that Alan Gura has brought. Now that McDonald has been decided, hopefully Palmer will come up quickly and serve as a basis for what anti-gun schemes are constitutional.
July 3, 2010, 6:28 pmElliot says:
An interesting aspect of the new Chicago law is it demands training at a range. But, ranges for the general public are outlawed in Chicago.
I haven’t seen the requirements for an instructor who can certify the training. Does Chicago have to certify him? Suppose they certify only one and he charges $1,200 per hour?
If Illinois enacted the same law, then outlawed civilian ranges, would that pass constitutional muster?
July 3, 2010, 6:30 pmcboldt says:
http://www.ttb.gov/
July 3, 2010, 6:34 pmBleh says:
That’s fair. I was just laying out my own bias up front, but I did use a non-specific term. The type of weapons I meant to refer to are largely those covered by the now expired Federal Assault Weapons Ban. Although I’m sure there are certain weapons on the list I wouldn’t agree with, and some that aren’t on the list that I would think should be.
July 3, 2010, 6:35 pmBleh says:
How does the law define ranges for the general public? Does it require a fee to join a range? Or does that just mean that people can’t walk off the street, grab and gun, and start firing? In other words, does it mean that people have to take a safety class before becoming a member of a range? If so, that may actually make the laws compatible… Most ranges I’ve been to require a short safety class before a novice could shoot–and there wasn’t a huge fee (usually they make most of their their money by selling ammo at a high price).
July 3, 2010, 6:44 pmcboldt says:
– The type of weapons I meant to refer to are largely those covered by the now expired Federal Assault Weapons Ban –
July 3, 2010, 6:45 pmAlso known as the scary looking guns ban. Each weapon on that list has a non-banned corollary weapon that is equally “effective” and “dangerous” with regard to propelling projectiles. The magazine capacity ban wasn’t really a ban, because it grandfathered existing magazines.
The feds would have been smarter to have banned the Cadillac tailfins, because they actually did create a hazard to the public.
Kharn says:
States/cities that charge large fees claiming they need it to investigate someone’s background have a huge hole under the waterline: the FBI operates the National Instant Check system free-of-charge for dealers to call when private citizens make a purchase.
July 3, 2010, 6:51 pmJ. Aldridge says:
Weren’t all arms highly taxed since 1789? Many I think were sold with a “tax stamp.” I am unaware of anyone arguing such a tax was unconstitutional because it was a burden of the right to self defense under arms bearing provisions of state constitutions.
I think the so called argument of self-defense under the 2A is going to lead to whacky theories far beyond the purpose it was meant to serve.
July 3, 2010, 6:52 pmLib says:
Hmm… Maybe it’s interesting to ask what should happen if it turns out that private gun owners using their right of self defense result in a reduction in crime. This would likely result in a savings to the city in police, prosecution, medical care, and jail costs as well as to residents in reduction of property theft, damage, and personal injury costs.
If such externalized savings outweigh the cost of administering the gun permit program, I would assume that Chicago would then pay people to get a permit. If the amount was high enough (which one could imagine) to be higher than the cost of a gun, lock, ammo, and occasional training classes, it could be an extra source of income for folks on a fixed income.
Neat.
July 3, 2010, 6:57 pmEd says:
Requiring registration in order to exercise a fundamental right with the penalty for non compliance being prison, is unconstitutional. Besides that, what does registration accomplish that NICS (the FBI’s national instant criminal background check system) doesn’t already do? Do criminals register their firearms?
July 3, 2010, 6:59 pmcboldt says:
– Weren’t all arms highly taxed since 1789? Many I think were sold with a “tax stamp.” I am unaware of anyone arguing such a tax was unconstitutional because it was a burden of the right to self defense under arms bearing provisions of state constitutions. –
July 3, 2010, 7:03 pmAs far as I know, the 1934 NFA was the first, and it was declared unconstitutional by a Federal District Court. The holding of the 1934 tax as unconstitutional was to be upheld, said SCOTUS, only if the weapon being taxed “has some reasonable relationship to the preservation or efficiency of a well regulated militia … [or] is any part of the ordinary military equipment or that its use could contribute to the common defense.”
Gaunillo says:
Bleh
More hypotheticals: Would the courts countenance a tax on publishing and newspaper revenue to offset the damages done by unethical publishers, such as slander, libel, intentional infliction of distress?
Would the courts countenance a tax on church revenue to offset the damage done by cults, idiots in the pulpit, and clergy abuse of children?
Both of these can be defined, and would be fairly easy to collect. But we do not have them, and I don’t think we ever will.
The truth is that taxes and regulations specific to firearms are nearly always a way to show disapproval of “those” people who want those icky guns that normal people should not want.
In past discussions comparing firearm deaths and injuries to automobile deaths and injuries, I know there was always an barely unspoken objection of “but there is a legitimate use for automobiles.”
It has been clear for the last 50 years or so that the rights guaranteed by the 2nd amendment have never been considered to be important like the rest of the bill of rights to much of the establishment elite on the east and west coasts. The court has decided differently, and we need to press hard to make sure that that means something.
July 3, 2010, 7:04 pmBleh says:
Imagine a society where guns do not exist. In such a society police officers would likely carry clubs or swords — lower cost weapons. In a society where guns do exist, officers have to carry guns. So there is at minimum a cost associated with arming officers with weapons equal to or greater than those possessed by criminals. That’s obviously a pretty simplified viewpoint, but it does illustrate that there are some costs to having guns in a society. Additionally, some people who wouldn’t have otherwise had the guts to commit a crime will commit a crime if they have a gun — that would be an additional cost (which I grant you, is impossible to calculate). There are also increased costs associated with the severity of wounds caused by weapons as opposed to fists. Really all it comes down to is laying out which costs are easily calculated, and which costs we can reasonably estimate — then attempt to balance the fees to be charged against the desire not to make the cost of weapons prohibitive (obviously whatever other costs there are would still have to be passed on to society as a whole as a tax — in cases where the costs can’t be attributed to a specific person).
Additionally, if what you say is true and having a lot of citizens walking around packing heat actually decreases crime rates, then like you said the costs should come down and the fee should be decreased. You may argue that the government never decreases fees — something I would probably agree with generally — but since this is a constitutional right, I would expect a court to overturn a fee which is shown to be clearly in excess of the costs offset.
As for the cost of the bureaucracy associated with collecting the fees themselves, I can see that as a valid concern, but it doesn’t seem clear to me why the fee can’t be assessed by the seller of the weapon (like sales tax) and then sent on to the government. I suppose part of the issue with that is it would mean that the entire cost associated with the weapon would have to be paid upfront (making the initial purchase very costly), and a yearly registration fee might be preferable — but I’m unsure of what the answers are there… That would also seem to require some balancing of cost, privacy, complexity, and other issues. Still, that doesn’t convince me that a fee is unreasonable by its very nature.
July 3, 2010, 7:05 pmSuperSkeptic says:
How does this regime not violate the equal protection of the laws? I don’t see how the Constitution permits such “line-drawing,” however practicable it may seem.
And practically speaking, no matter what context or right we are speaking of, all this serves to do is to discourage those who actually want to exercise any given right. If the people felt the need to constitutionalize the right in the first place for all, perhaps that is an indicator that the costs should be borne by all – equally.
July 3, 2010, 7:06 pmBama 1L says:
There is a tax on digital media to offset the damages caused by piracy.
July 3, 2010, 7:12 pmlgm says:
Guns may be legal, but they are also undesirable — like smoking, and lying politicians. The government should do what it can to reduce the incidence of guns, like it tries to reduce smoking. We tax cigarettes. Let’s tax guns. Let’s zone gun shops out of town. Let’s have have police come to schools to remind students how dangerous guns are.
Guns may have been related to self reliance for Daniel Boone. But in modern times, self reliance means getting an MBA.
July 3, 2010, 7:13 pmGaunillo says:
Eighty million of your fellow citizens disagree with you. I think you prove my earlier statement about east and west coast elite prejudices and the aim of most firearms regulations and taxes as being aimed at discouraging us bumpkins and our funny beliefs.
July 3, 2010, 7:19 pmSuperSkeptic says:
Ignoring the fundamental right, here, just like four Supreme Court justices I know…
July 3, 2010, 7:23 pmGaunillo says:
I do not think that exists. There was a proposed fee on cassette tapes back in the day, but it did not pass. The closest thing I am aware of is the “Music CD” which includes a fee that goes to music publishers. But it is a perfectly normal CD, and the only reason ever to purchase it is when retailers periodically run a sale on it to clear out the stupid things–I can’t imagine any other reason for buying it. If there is an equivalent in the DVD world, I am not aware of it.
July 3, 2010, 7:25 pmcboldt says:
– Guns may be legal, but they are also undesirable — like smoking, and lying politicians.The government should do what it can to reduce the incidence of guns … –
July 3, 2010, 7:25 pmI notice you didn’t call on the government to eliminate the lying politicians, just guns and smoking.
I was interviewed for Daily Caller article on Chicago’s Post-McDonald Gun Control Regulations says:
[...] Eugene Volokh has a great post about the constitutionality of fees, and whether they amount to an unconstitutional tax on a [...]
July 3, 2010, 7:30 pmBleh says:
I can’t answer your hypotheticals, that would be for the courts to decide. All I’m say is that there is precedent for fees associated with exercising rights in certain ways. Where the line should be drawn, as far as charging a fee for weapons, will probably be decided by the state legislatures and the courts.
I support a tax and regulations. I also own a gun. I don’t disapprove of people who own guns, only of people who think that guns are toys or status symbols.
July 3, 2010, 7:34 pmDr. Weevil says:
Bleh: “Imagine a society where guns do not exist.” No, thanks. I don’t see the point of such an exercise. Guns, gun crime (e.g. highwaymen), and gun use for prevention of crime (e.g. shooting or deterring highwaymen) all existed when the Bill of Rights was written and passed, so such an alternate-universe society is utterly irrelevant to the question at hand.
The fact is that many states have loosened their gun laws over the last decade or two, and any effect on the crime rate has been positive – by which I mean downwards – contrary to the lurid predictions of the gun-banners. Meanwhile, Australia and the U.K. have confiscated guns from law-abiding citizens and (I don’t have the links, but I’m pretty sure this is true) seen their crime rates go way up. My suggestion that the murder and other crime rates in Chicago and other cities that currently ban law-abiding citizens from owning guns are likely to go down is not just a wild hypothetical: it is very likely to happen. Unless the mayors get away with throttling their citizens’ constitutional rights, we will very soon see.
July 3, 2010, 7:38 pmcboldt says:
This debate, relating to taxing a fundamental right, involves the intersection of the Pittman-Robertson Act (a 1937 act that imposes what is now that 10 and 11% federal tax on firearm and ammunition sales), and Minneapolis Star v Minnesota, 460 U.S. 575 (1983).
July 3, 2010, 7:48 pmOrenWithAnE says:
Exactly this.
July 3, 2010, 7:53 pmaggie esq says:
OrenWithAnE says:
I support a tax and regulations. I also own a gun. I don’t disapprove of people who own guns, only of people who think that guns are toys or status symbols.
Exactly this
And thankfully we have a specific Constitutional provision, only recently acknowledged by the USSC, to protect my right against your disapproval (as may be acted upon by elected or appointed officials).
And exactly what tax and what regulations do you support? That’s the essence of Prof V’s article and post.
July 3, 2010, 8:07 pmbystander says:
July 3, 2010, 8:28 pmUnderdog Soldier says:
Just replace “gun tax” with “abortion tax” and see how far that gets
July 3, 2010, 8:33 pmlgm says:
I thought I acknowledged the fundamental right, like right politicians have to lie when not under oath.
Hello media.
Gun ownership is as popular now as smoking was in the sixties. Times can change.
Your words, not mine. Is it a prejudice or a rightfully decided conclusion?
July 3, 2010, 8:40 pmBleh says:
Are people not required to pay for their abortions? Is there an external cost associated with an abortion that is not covered by the fee paid to the doctor? There are some who would probably argue that not bringing an unwanted child into this world decreases costs to the rest of society.
July 3, 2010, 8:51 pmpm18 says:
That’s good!
July 3, 2010, 8:52 pmWelcome to pm18
Bama 1L says:
Right, that’s the tax I mean. 17 U.S.C. §§ 1003-1007. Manufacturers and importers of digital audio recording devices and media have to pay a percentage to a fund that is distributed to persons entitled to music royalties. This is supposed to compensate them for the diminished royalty payments (piracy) these items facilitate, and of course to offset the Copyright Office’s expenses in collecting and distributing the payments.
So you have a government mandated fee on the tools by which a fundamental right is exercised, premised on the notion that some of those tools will be put to unlawful use, causing damages, and prospectively defraying those damages.
How is that not analogous to a tax on guns and ammunition that, say, bought body armor for police officers?
July 3, 2010, 8:55 pmUnderdog Soldier says:
Of course abortions are generally not free but neither are guns. There is an external cost associated with bearing an arm (i.e. buying the gun & ammunition). Tax-free guns are not cost-free guns. The abortion tax analogy is solid.
July 3, 2010, 8:59 pmFederal Farmer says:
Isn’t registration a violation of privacy? What is the compelling interest to the government that justifies this invasion?
If Chicago has returned a registered gun that was stolen to its owner, I’ll be surprised.
If Chicago has solved a crime due to gun registration, I’ll be surprised.
The system isn’t even automated to the point that an officer can know what guns are registered when responding to the house. No use there.
Even were the information available, responding officers that want to survive to retire some day would respond to all houses as if there were armed occupants.
Someone asked about the training, Chicago’s new ordinance requires that a trainer be certified by the State of Illinois. However, the ultimate details of the training requirement are left to the Superintendent, as with several other portions of the regulation scheme including the roster of ‘unsafe’ handguns.
July 3, 2010, 9:03 pmFederal Farmer says:
What if that child would have gone on to cure cancer or something…
July 3, 2010, 9:05 pmAllan Walstad says:
It should be possible to use the former gun-banners’ (now gun-taxers’) own rhetoric against them. Folks like Daley are clearly scheming and conspiring to abridge or discourage exercise of 2A rights. As a remedy, I suggest enjoining local and state governments from placing any tax whatever on firearms and ammo for a sufficient period, say, 25 years, to break the back of this collusion. I would expect support from all those on recent VC threads promoting the argument that the existence of collusive racial discrimination in the Jim Crow South required, as a remedy, the infringement of property rights. My proposal is much more modest, merely a temporary infringement of local and state governments’ prerogative of levying certin taxes that they have demonstrated the intention to abuse.
July 3, 2010, 9:05 pmcboldt says:
lgm: — Hello media. –
July 3, 2010, 9:09 pmYou still didn’t call on the government to discourage lying politicians (e.g., tax ‘em by the lie), like you advocate the government to discourage smoking (not an enumerated right) and keeping and bearing arms.
Bleh says:
People keep saying this, and I’m not saying it’s false, but do you have any data on this? I tried looking on Google and can’t find much that supports this theory. Most of the actual data and scholarly articles I can find seems to suggest that either no conclusions can be drawn or that this statement is false.
So far I’ve found this info:
- Firearm Death Rates – Expanded chart here
-NEJM Article
- Snopes on Australia
I personally am of the view that, most of the time, if people want to kill each other, they’ll find a way. But I’m not sure I buy the idea that no gun regulations = safer society. And I do fall victim to the bias of thinking that guns probably do add to the death toll at least somewhat. But if there’s data out there showing a correlation between crime rates and lax gun regulations I’d be happy to take a look at it and rethink things.
(I keep trying to post this and it doesn’t post. I think it’s because of the link I’m trying to include. I apologize if this message pops up 3 times later on.)
July 3, 2010, 9:16 pmMr. Potatohead, Esq. says:
Soon Chicago will develop a sprawling administrative gun control agency whose costs will need to be defrayed by gun fees.
July 3, 2010, 9:19 pmAllan Walstad says:
Bleh
Well, the minimum would be semi-auto pistols and rifles with sizable magazines. These have been legally in private hands already for a century. I don’t think we need to include grenades, bombs, missiles, etc to fulfil the militia purpose. But I would include fully-auto hand-carried rifles. That puts the people on the same footing as the military with regard to hand-held, person-against-person, aimed, individual weapons. I would also include non-lethal weapons like tasers. I don’t have QED arguments for my position. I welcome the discussion. But I’d add this: Nobody who denies the individual right to keep and bear arms has a seat at the table in that discussion–by which I mean they shouldn’t be taken seriously, any more than in discussing the limits on, say, freedom of speech, we would be inclined to take seriously the opinions of people who deny any such right exists.
July 3, 2010, 9:20 pmrpt says:
All these issues could be resolved if the government simply gave free guns and ammunition to everyone over a certain age. A reasonable selection could be provided. Everyone’s RKBA for self defense and any other lawful purpose would be protected. Gun manufacturers would thrive. It’s a win-win-win. Right?
July 3, 2010, 9:26 pmnotaclue says:
Bleh, where’d you go? I answered your question but found your post missing when I posted the answer. Oh, well. Here’s the answer anyway: John Lott has done a lot of work on that issue: http://johnrlott.blogspot.com/
July 3, 2010, 9:28 pmDonP says:
“Gun ownership is as popular now as smoking was in the sixties. Times can change.”
Ironic, in the ’60′s I could walk into Sears or Western Tire and buy a 30.06 off the open display rack with no ID and no background check.
They are definitely changing, but not in the way you’d like. Gun control peaked in the early 90′s … and then the gunowners woke up. That day is gone and isn’t coming back.
No more phony “compromises” where the discussion centers around which gun, feature, right we’ll give up now – until the next “compromise”. Like someone said, “How can I compromise if you are already standing on my toes?”
But yeah, you keep hoping.
The trends are all in the direction of growth of ownership. Record gun sales for three years (with 25 year record low violent crime rates – pure coincidence) now combined with growth of concealed carry and loosening of gun control restrictions by legislature and by court decision. NRA membership is pushing 5 million dues paying members.
From personal searching, there is not a single gun control participatory wenbsite out there that I’ve found in several years.
There are thousands of pro gun/shooting sites featuring things as obtuse as fine tuning your Russian Mosin-Nagant 91-30 bolt action and jokes about guns and not one site for the gun control fans that allows readers to participate. Even Brady has “Comments off” for every one of their websites.
Funny that. You’d almost think that the p0eople that think guns are icky are afraid of an open debate on their views. Hmmmm?
July 3, 2010, 9:29 pmHenry Bowman says:
But what of the ruling in Murdock v. PA 319 US 105 (1942) that said:
A state may not impose a charge for the enjoyment of a right granted by the federal constitution… The power to impose a license tax on the exercise of these freedoms is indeed as potent as the power of censorship which this Court has repeatedly struck down… a person cannot be compelled ‘to purchase, through a license fee or a license tax, the privilege freely granted by the constitution.’
After all, it entirely misses the point to argue that a charge that covers the cost of processing a license is constitutional, when the gun owner derives no benefit to himself from the license, and the only reason he is applying is because the government requires it in the first place.
July 3, 2010, 9:46 pmJack Burton says:
I have generally found that the person who usess the term “assualt weapon” has no clue as to what they are actually speaking of.
Fortuanatly ignorance can be cured.
July 3, 2010, 9:57 pmArthur Kirkland says:
Gun nuts who want to be freeloaders. Who woulda thunk it?
July 3, 2010, 9:59 pmGene Hoffman says:
Everyone who thinks a world without guns is something they look forward to has not met a rabid dog or coyote, angry mountain lion, or hungry bear.
Rabid dogs even happen in cities. Be gun free so you can get rabies.
-Gene
July 3, 2010, 10:02 pmXenocles says:
There are handguns that sell for under $200. Without trying to set a bright line here, I think it should be obvious that a tax that more than triples the purchase price of an item is not reasonable.
July 3, 2010, 10:14 pmJack Burton says:
Get back to us when you are willing to pay for the privelege of writing a letter to the editor.
July 3, 2010, 10:16 pmDr. Weevil says:
Arthur Kirkland:
July 3, 2010, 10:19 pmCould you please identify who has written anything insane in the previous 54 comments (“nut”), and who has demanded totally free gun licensing or tax-free guns and ammunition (“freeloaders”)? Though one or two have asked about the constitutionality of taxing a constitutionally-protected right, I don’t see anyone objecting to paying the usual state sales tax (5% where I am) on their guns and ammunition, or even the 10-11% excise tax, which I suspect is levied in addition to the sales tax. If you think a 200% sales tax (just to pick a number out of the air) on guns and ammunition is reasonable, perhaps you should ask whether it would be reasonable to tax abortions at that rate. And I haven’t noticed any insane comments, though yours is not exactly sober.
If you can’t identify any nuts or freeloaders here, maybe you should just go away and leave the conversation to the grown-ups.
cboldt says:
– I think it should be obvious that a tax that more than triples the purchase price of an item is not reasonable. –
July 3, 2010, 10:22 pmUmmmm … see the tax on silencers. And on short barrel shotgun/rifles.
Now, at one time, this tax was found to be unconstitutional IF the item being subjected to the tax had a militia or common defensive use (“Common” as in “defense of the community,” not as “many people possess”). However, it seems the Supreme Court had a change of heart, and became unable to read, understand, and/or properly state its own precedent. Personally, I think the Court engaged in rank hackery, and I know I’m not the only one of that mind.
But, to play along with them just for grins, this thread has cited at least two other cases that touch on taxing a fundamental right, and those cases will need to be distinguished somehow.
Elliot says:
If a cop is ten minutes away and someone is breaking into your house, exactly how does one deploy the MBA?
July 3, 2010, 10:29 pmAllan Walstad says:
Athur’s comment appears to be a bit of wry humor playing off a weakly snarky earlier comment by rpt:
July 3, 2010, 10:30 pmDr. Weevil says:
Elliot:
July 3, 2010, 10:30 pmAsk the MBA to stand between you and the possibly-armed burglar?
OrenWithAnE says:
Shall-issue CCW permitting based on neutral criteria (felony/MDV conviction, mental health issues) and subject to due process review seems reasonable.
The 12% firearms and ammunition tax is fine.
Prohibition on discharge within city limits seems like a fine regulation.
I oppose requiring gun owners to receive training on par with that required of abortion doctors. I also oppose requiring them to submit to oversight on par with abortion doctors. I also oppose requiring them to be accredited by a third party organization.
In fact, abortion doctors seem to have it far worse in nearly every respect than gun owners (excepting that the former are almost always the latter accounting for the rare violent protester).
July 3, 2010, 10:39 pmRobert says:
I believe he was speaking of taxing the procedure itself, and therefor the woman who is receiving the abortion, not the doctor.
A decent sword can cost as much or more than a gun. This company sells swords that would be considered on the low-end of functional, and their prices for many of the swords are as much or more than the cost of a Glock pistol (which can go from $300 used to around $600 new, and is one of the most widely issued police firearms). Back before guns became common, swords were even more expensive due to the difficulty of manufacturing them. They were usually reserved for the rich or the nobility for this reason.
July 3, 2010, 11:00 pmJoe Hooker says:
One area this is likely to come up is with microstamping ammunition i.e. requiring each round of ammo to be stamped with identifying marks. This might help police catch criminals, but the cost would be astronomical. The backstory here is to make ammo so expensive no one can afford it. Semi-auto pistols would effectively be banned. New York is considering just such a thing right now, tho it looks unlikely to pass right away.
This is one area that gun ownership opponents are pursuing — going not after guns, but after ammunition by making it so expensive in the name of crime detection, safety, etc. that no one can afford it.
So the Constitution says you can own a gun. What about ammunition? Would this be a substantial burden?
July 3, 2010, 11:03 pmrpt says:
Athur’s comment appears to be a bit of wry humor playing off a weakly snarky earlier comment by rpt:
Nothing snarky about it. Please address the issue; why not free guns?
July 3, 2010, 11:28 pmrpt says:
Allan: Why should people who can’t afford to buy guns and ammunition be deprived of their 2A rights?
July 3, 2010, 11:30 pmDenver says:
You understand that both before, and after, the FAWB, ownership of Fully Automatic Machine Guns (.30 cal Browning, .50 cal Browning, M-16) was, and is, completely legal under Federal statue. So the anti-liberty crowd bans semi-automatic copies of legal to buy, own, possess and shoot, fully automatic firearms?
They are of low character and breeding.
July 3, 2010, 11:56 pmmack says:
Hmmm, I wonder it the criminals (who illegally possessed guns) who robbed a liquor store a half block from my old apartment and then made all nine patrons and employees (who were by law unarmed) lie face down on the floor and then executed them one by one by putting a bullet in the back of their heads – stopped to ask any of them if they had an MBA?
July 4, 2010, 12:08 amOrenWithAnE says:
Robert says:
So you would be happy with the State requiring gun dealers to go to gun school for 8 years and then do a gun residency before being allowed to sell? Or in general, for gun dealers to be as heavily regulated as abortion doctors? I wouldn’t be.
It’s pretty basic economics that taxing any part of the procedure is roughly equivalent.
July 4, 2010, 12:19 amlgm says:
Sure there are times lives could be saved if a person who didn’t have a gun had one (and knew how to use it). Someone might have avoided a bear or a robbery murder. I suppose it happens. But shootings by people who have guns but shouldn’t are a tad more common. Even those accidents where the toddler is playing in daddy’s closet are more common.
July 4, 2010, 12:22 amArthur Kirkland says:
If I send it by mail, I buy a stamp. If I transmit it by facsimile, I pay for a telephone line (and a tax on the line). If I deliver it by hand, I pay for a vehicle and gasoline (more taxes) and a registration tag, or to ride a bus, or to travel by aircraft. If I choose to deliver the message in a parade, I purchase a permit.
If one exercises the Constitutional right to possess a reasonable firearm for self-defense in the home (a right I support), I believe, one should expect to pay reasonable prices (including taxes) for the economic activity associated with exercising that right. If one chooses to engage in purely recreational activity involving weapons, to the extent that conduct is lawful, the argument against even steep prices appears to diminish.
July 4, 2010, 12:31 amMike says:
That is, fortunately, a blatant falsehood. The number of children accidentally killed by guns is on the order of 100 per year. Most anti gun groups include teenage gang members up to their early twenties in their statistics for “children” killed by guns. They also include suicides, despite no data showing a link between gun ownership and suicide rates ( it only correlates with choice of suicide method ). They also include cases where the law found that the shooting was justified in self defense.
Estimates for the number ofttimes guns were legitimately used in sell defense range from 100,000 a year to 2 million times a year. It’s hard to measure unfortunately as many incidents do not involve shots fired or a call to the police. Even the low end, though, exceeds the number of homicides by a fair amount.
I have much less of a problem with people disagreeing about gun ownership than I do with the just plain wrong information that is often used to prove their point.
July 4, 2010, 12:36 amUnderdog Soldier says:
If gun dealers made what abortion docs made then your argument would be more compelling. Doctors are rewarded handsomely for/because of the requisite schooling. Gun dealers and abortionists are apples and oranges because doctors provide a highly skilled [albeit evil] service where gun dealers provide goods.
Also, I’m no economist but you are evidently less so, because what part of the procedure is taxed makes all the difference (e.g. whether something even makes it to the marketplace).
Robert’s clarification of my point is correct — taxing gun owners is like taxing an abortion seeker (not the doctor). Try answering my actual point, people would go bonkers if you levied a tax on abortions.
July 4, 2010, 12:39 amcboldt says:
– I have much less of a problem with people disagreeing about gun ownership than I do with the just plain wrong information that is often used to prove their point. –
July 4, 2010, 12:42 amSome people can’t be credited with “good faith.” It’s pretty easy to figure out which people belong in that category.
Arthur Kirkland says:
The right to an abortion has been burdened in many ways at many times, for no good reason, by freedom-infringing anti-abortionists. A soldier or a soldier’s wife, for example, is, I believe, prevented from obtaining any medically indicated abortion (if the abortion nuts have their way, she’ll be denied a morning-after pill, too) at a military medical facility, even if the government isn’t asked to pay for it (as it should). State legislators pandering to anti-abortion zealots have imposed draconian, obstructionist, mean-spirited costs on restrictions on women who need or want an abortion, usually acknowledging no distinction among early- or late-term abortions, medically indicated or elective abortions, rape-or-incest-related procedures, morning-after pills (which most people, especially those with educations, do not recognize as being associated with abortion), or any other procedures that conflict with extremist opinion.
July 4, 2010, 12:43 amReaderY says:
Has there ever been an exemption for poor people when the tax is being added to an underlying purchase which is itself substantial?
For example, there is no exemption for poor people from automobile sales taxes and registration fees, or airplane tickets, notwithstanding the existence of a constitutional right to travel.
Professor Volokh, all the exemption cases you cited involved fact situations where the underlying activity (demonstrating, registering as a candidate, marrying) would otherwise be free and did not involve purchasing anything.
Is there an existing fact situation where the tax is connected to something that is purchased?
In your view, are automobile registration fees or airplane ticket taxes unconstitutional as applied to poor people? What about sales taxes for books?
July 4, 2010, 12:51 amOrenWithAnE says:
Make the requirements the same and quickly gun dealers would make as much. Conversely, reduce the requirements for being a doctor to that of the current FFL and you will quickly see their salary plunge.
That makes no sense. The only thing that determines whether it makes it to the market is the total cost versus the perceived utility. A large tax on FFLs is no different in this respect than a large tax on the purchase itself or a large tax on the manufacturer. Each step along the chain simply adjusts his price to reflect the cost.
And yet somehow they tolerate license fees for MDs …
July 4, 2010, 12:55 amDick King says:
The ACLU is suing Illinois over a lobbyist fee increase.
-dk
July 4, 2010, 1:05 ammack says:
The problem with this debate on the right to keep and bear arms – not just here, but in the halls of congress, in city halls, in statehouses and courthouses is this – there is the law and there is reality. There is theory and there is reality. An MBA – great – probably a smart move economically speaking and definitely will probably give one some level of economic security. But the threat of economic insecurity is just a small part of life and there are many worse things in life – like holding your five year old daughter in the ER and having her look you in the eye and say – daddy am I going to die – and you don’t know the answer. When it comes to the right to keep and bear arms you are talking about the right to defend your life and the lives of your loved ones – there is no more important right.
The old saying is – better to be tried by 12 than carried by six. Gun control does little to nothing to prevent violent predators from raping and murdering their prey. A firearm carried by an individual gives them a chance to effectively defend themselves and their loved ones.
Laws that prevent the otherwise law abiding from possessing or carrying a firearm for self defense are immoral and repugnant. Laws that aim at making it more difficult to do so without objectively demonstrable and significant benefit are just as immoral and repugnant.
So, don’t like guns or don’t want to have one fine – but don’t ever try to stand between me and my right to defend myself or my family.
I’ve met many people in my life – in my career I worked intimately with professors, lawyers, police officers, corporate executives, business owners, doctors, drug dealers, gang bangers, child molesters, rapists, murders, and Joe six-pack. What I found is that most people really aren’t that different, even when it comes to practical intelligence, except for one very important thing – some people have no real conscience – and they will do anything so long as they believe at the moment that they can get away with it. I’ve had violent gang bangers treat me like their best friend and maybe even believe it themselves – but they were predators – and I also knew that if I met them on the street and I had something they wanted – then my life wasn’t worth spit.
So the courts, the legislators, the academics, may all say what they want – and pass and enforce what laws they want – but the truth remains the truth and those that have experienced it and seen it will not betray it – we will be armed and we will defend ourselves and our loved ones and even our neighbors.
The RKBA is an essential liberty – without it most of the others aren’t worth spit.
July 4, 2010, 1:08 amFiftycal says:
2 points. Texas offers concealed handgun licenses to “indigent” applicants at 1/2 the rate for everyone else. So the regular people subsidize the actual cost or the charged price is a MONEY MAKER for the state.
As to “accidental killings” Firearms are involved in 0.5% of accidental deaths nationally, compared to motor vehicles (37%), poisoning (22%), falls (17%), suffocation (5%), drowning (2.9%), fires (2.5%), medical mistakes (1.7%), environmental factors (1.3%), and pedal cycles (0.7%). Among children: motor vehicles (41%), suffocation (21%), drowning (15%), fires (8%), pedal cycles (2%), poisoning (2%), falls (1.9%), environmental factors (1.5%), firearms (1.1%) and medical mistakes (1%).
http://www.nraila.org/issues/factsheets/read.aspx?id=120
July 4, 2010, 1:31 amChris W says:
Service members and their dependents can already get abortions at military hospitals in cases of rape, incest, or life endangerment. There was an amendment just offered to the 2011 Defense Auth. Bill that would allow abortions at military facilities here and abroad.
Man, first they call us baby-killers… now they want us to BE baby-killers!
July 4, 2010, 3:01 am/snark
Chris W says:
Seriously?
You have the freedom to burn the flag – doesn’t mean society must provide a lighter or matches (or a flag to burn).
Freedom of the press doesn’t mean that the government needs to pay the NY Times’ printing costs.
The list goes on…
July 4, 2010, 3:08 amChris W says:
EDIT:…allow elective abortions…
July 4, 2010, 3:11 amPES says:
I don’t pretend to know whether, in fact and from an originalist perspective, the 2nd Amendment includes an individual right to bear arms. However, a casual dismissal of those who think it does not is absurdly closed-minded and leads me to think that anyone espousing such a view “shouldn’t be taken seriously.” If you’ve read the opinions in McDonald, you’ll notice a claim that the vast majority of professional historians interested in the subject (in addition to Epstein and Posner) doubt the existence of a personal right from the originalist’s perspective. Unless you, too, are a professional historian, a blanket denial of any room for disagreement on the point is a completely vacuous assertion — one that the McDonald majority explicitly disavowed.
Second, any claim that asserts a clear-cut positive (or negative) correlation between a decrease in gun regulation and a decrease in violent crime (or between an increase in regulation and an increase in violent crime) is simply unsupportable. It’s like saying that lower corporate taxes lead to an increase in investment — a claim that is very popular to make, but that no one has proven one way or the other. Simplicity is a boon for rhetoric, but not so great for modeling reality.
July 4, 2010, 3:16 amc.scott says:
Wait a moment, are you suggesting that toddlers playing with daddy’s guns in the closet unsupervised happens more commonly than a situation where lives could be saved if a person who didn’t have a gun had one?
I seriously doubt that as, from last statistic I checked, children were more likely to drown in their home pool than accidentally shoot themselves with a gun in the home.
But a statistics I think that is overlooked is how many hundreds of millions of guns in America aren’t used illegally, or that aren’t part of some tragic accident. Millions of responsible gun owners successfully manage to keep from using their guns in irrational situations.
I myself can understand a small sales tax, like all other items. I might abide the current excise tax to prevent the illegal sale and distribution of guns. But I don’t believe that guns should be taxed to cover “costs to society” because someone might use it illegally.
July 4, 2010, 4:24 amBleh says:
I feel like you think I’m stupider, with respect to firearms than I actually am. But nonetheless, I have yet to see any special use for “assault weapons,” for self-defense purposes, which could not also be served by a normal shotgun or handgun. Nor do I see any reason to take those types of weapons on a hunting trip. Assault rifles are designed for battlefield conditions, not so much for close range self-defense. As such, it would seem to me, based on my obviously ignorant point of view, that they would be of use to 1) enthusiasts, and 2) people trying to kill a bunch of people. I would hope that there would be some sort of regulations that could be enacted to attempt to allow the maximum number of gun collectors/enthusiasts to enjoy these weapons, while simultaneously trying to limit the number of guns that get into the hands of group 2.
I assume this comment is directed at me, since the rest of your comment is. If it is not, then I misunderstood and I apologize for what I’m about to say:
Always fun talking with someone who gets straight to the point. Fuck you.
July 4, 2010, 4:32 amsay what? says:
The fact is that many states have loosened their gun laws over the last decade or two, and any effect on the crime rate has been positive — by which I mean downwards — contrary to the lurid predictions of the gun-banners. Meanwhile, Australia and the U.K. have confiscated guns from law-abiding citizens and (I don’t have the links, but I’m pretty sure this is true) seen their crime rates go way up. My suggestion that the murder and other crime rates in Chicago and other cities that currently ban law-abiding citizens from owning guns are likely to go down is not just a wild hypothetical: it is very likely to happen.
This is just a blatantly untrue statement. First of all, the effect of loosening of gun laws on crime rates in this country has no correlation with a drop in crime rate (even if correlation = causation there is no correlation to show, in fact the correlation points the other way, states with looser gun control laws tend to have higher gun death rates). Secondly, even before Australia and the UK tightened their gun laws, self defense was not considered a legitimate use of firearms (they were licensed, with almost no exceptions, for sporting use only), so tightening gun laws would not have had a significant impact on crime.
As for violent crime rates in this country. Look at the stats. Chicago has no worse crime than gun-totin’ cities like Houston and Dallas. The city with by far the highest violent crime and murder rate in the country is New Orleans, a city and state (Louisiana is also usually among the states with the highest violent crime rates) with no meaningful gun control laws. New York City and Honolulu, with their draconian gun control laws, are among the safest cities in the country.
July 4, 2010, 4:58 amPat H. says:
As cbolt has stated, the dominant case is Minneapolis Stat vs. Minnesota Commissioner of Revenue (1983), which should enable the striking down of most taxes on firearms and ammunition. The US Fish & Wildlife Service will have to find another revenue source, or better yet, be abolished.
The BATFAE may have to cease collecting the punitive tax on NFA weapons as well.
July 4, 2010, 5:47 amsay what? says:
The US Fish & Wildlife Service will have to find another revenue source, or better yet, be abolished.
Are you seriously contending that Fish and Wildlife should be abolished. Or that a tax on hunting ammunition and firearms is not a legitimate means to support the cost of Fish and Wildlife’s support of hunting? Do you think that maintaining national forests and wildlife reserves, often specifically for the benefit of hunters, is free?
July 4, 2010, 5:57 amsay what? says:
As cbolt has stated, the dominant case is Minneapolis Stat vs. Minnesota Commissioner of Revenue (1983), which should enable the striking down of most taxes on firearms and ammunition. The US Fish & Wildlife Service will have to find another revenue source, or better yet, be abolished.
Even if there is a broad constitutional 2nd amendment right for self-defense, how on earth does that extend to a constitutional right to recreational hunting?
July 4, 2010, 6:33 amKharn says:
If you do not think they are popular for hunting you need to try prairie dogs, hogs and deep-South deer hunting. AR15s can be made very accurate with surprisingly little effort so they are quite popular for prairie dogs. Hogs and deer in the South are typically hunted in ares where any shot would be less than a hundred yards, and in the case of hogs, you may need several more shots to stop the hogs before they eat you. A weapon designed for battlefield conditions is tough, reliable, easy to maintain, simple to use and effective, all qualities knowledgeable individuals look for when selecting a home defense weapon. If you need to defend yourself in unknown conditions from 0-300 yards, its hard to argue against an assault rifle. Shotguns and handguns are rarely effective beyond 25-50 yards, and full-size rifles too unwieldy for close range with small magazines (there might be 3-4 of the perp’s friends lurking in the darkness you don’t see until its too late).
Why approach a rabid dog within 10 yards to hit it with your shotgun or pistol when you can take a shot at 100+ yards with your rifle, or take a shotgun to answer a bump in the night that only has five rounds when you can take an evil black rifle that carries thirty in one magazine. I haven’t even gone into the light mounts, lasers (great for shooting at night or intimidation when required), electronic sights and other handy accessories available for such rifles that make them into superb home-and-property defense weapons.
July 4, 2010, 7:27 amHenry Bowman says:
Did you fall for the sleight of hand, or would you hoping we would? By that I mean the magic pass that turned “crime rates” in the first part of the sentence into “gun death rates” in the second. Gun death rates is a useless metric. Violent crime rates is the metric that measures quality of life, not what weapon happened to be used to kill a person who ended up dead anyway. And if you look at those stats, the correlation is indeed there, and is very strong.
And yet the correlation is there, no matter how hard you wave your hands and argue it shouldn’t be.
July 4, 2010, 8:07 amsay what? says:
And if you look at those stats, the correlation is indeed there, and is very strong.
Secondly, even before Australia and the UK tightened their gun laws, self defense was not considered a legitimate use of firearms (they were licensed, with almost no exceptions, for sporting use only), so tightening gun laws would not have had a significant impact on crime.
And yet the correlation is there, no matter how hard you wave your hands and argue it shouldn’t be.
The correlation is not there. And since guns were not used for self-defense (and in the UK, there were only about 50,000 households that owned handguns to begin with–long guns were not banned), how could the banning of such guns have had any effect on crime rates. British gun laws did and do (and they are enforced by regular unanounced visits by the police) that guns kept in the home be disassembled, locked in a safe and unloaded–absolutely worthless for self defense.
July 4, 2010, 8:25 amLou Gots says:
Much of this discussion is based on a misapprehension to the effect of Heller and McDonald. Their main import is political, not legal.
Places like Chicago, D.C. and the PRC (not China, the other Peoples’ Republic–California) are lost to civilization. Oh, the gun rights team can pick around the edges of places like that, but we can already see that the petty tyrants there plan to stand like some Southern governor in the schoolhouse door, symbolically defyng the law of the land.
The real importance of the Second Amendment cases is to move the center of the debate in the rest of the country, and that is already happening. We have seen how the RKBA movement is gaining ground through a right-to-carry revolution in most of the country. Sales of guns and ammunition have taken off, people are voting with their pocketbooks.
The gun-grabbers are staggering about the wreckage or their cause and raving about fees and taxes. Fees and taxes? We may just as likely see reinstatement of government support of civilian marksmanship. The emotional force, the momentum, is all on the gun side now. The whole world has seen congress on its knees before the NRA in the DISCLOSE matter. The high school civics and undergraduate Con Law textbooks will no longer teach the collective model of the Second Amendment or spin the myth that U.S. vs. Miller was suthority for the proposition that the Second Amendment did not protect an individual right to keep and bear arms, or that such abominations as Cruikshank and Slaughterhouse Cases are good law.
That debate is over. Now, when we talk about guns the questions will be over what we can to to advance the right to keep and bear arms.
July 4, 2010, 8:31 amalex_on_the_lake says:
Having had to use an “assault weapon” to stop an angry mob in my front yard, I don’t see them as useless for self defense. To the contrary, when there is more members of the mob, then rounds in your gun, then things look pretty scary. The sight of that ugly rifle stopped them. Then they thought about it, then left. I guess the price was too high.
It is true what they say about police being minutes away when seconds count, it my case it was about 20 minutes. They are good at filling out paper work.
Maybe a handgun or shotgun would have done the same. But I would rather not try it again and find out.
July 4, 2010, 8:49 amcboldt says:
– I don’t pretend to know whether, in fact and from an originalist perspective, the 2nd Amendment includes an individual right to bear arms. However, a casual dismissal of those who think it does not is absurdly closed-minded and leads me to think that anyone espousing such a view “shouldn’t be taken seriously.” –
July 4, 2010, 8:54 amYou’re doing a similar thing you say is absurdly closed-minded, from the other direction. This rift between opponents results from an irreconcilable difference of belief as to the existence of a personal RKBA.
The low regard that RKBA proponents have for gun-grabbers right to affect (in some case, to implement over objection, see Chicago; see Courts who find no personal right, etc.) policy decisions isn’t taken casually. It is taken after reading the raw source material, then comparing it with the claims of the gun grabbers. Not a direct example, but if a person claims to have carefully read and studied the Miller case, then asserts “Miller was convicted, the 1934 NFA was unconditionally upheld,” the only reasonable conclusion to be made is that person is not to be trusted to tell the truth.
– I feel like you think I’m stupider, with respect to firearms than I actually am. … Assault rifles are designed for battlefield conditions, not so much for close range self-defense. –
“Assault rifles” are a form of battlefield weapon, where the battlefield may well be close range self defense, such as clearing buildings, etc. They are typically equipped to fire a relatively low power round, for example 9mm, which is an inferior round (to put it mildly) for “open field” or other combat.
cboldt says:
– The high school civics and undergraduate Con Law textbooks will no longer teach the collective model of the Second Amendment or spin the myth that U.S. vs. Miller was suthority for the proposition that the Second Amendment did not protect an individual right to keep and bear arms, or that such abominations as Cruikshank and Slaughterhouse Cases are good law.
July 4, 2010, 9:09 amThat debate is over. –
I don’t think that debate is “over,” in that gun grabbers are persistent in pedaling falsehood. See this thread, for example. In the law schools (and in the Courts), one sees picking the erroneous parts of Heller and teaching the error as truth (Miller was convicted, the Miller case stands for the constitutionality of bans on civilian ownership of weapons that have a military use).
And Cruickshank / Presser are not negative to an RKBA proponent. Cruickshank basically says the 2nd amendment doesn’t work against citizens, it works against the government. IOW, I can’t, operating as a citizen, infringe a constitutional right. That is black letter 1L law. The constitution does not restrain private actors. And the Presser case says that the 2nd amendment doesn’t prohibit states and municipalities from enacting parade permit laws. The Courts have dishonestly skipped a very important part of the Presser dicta, and elevated a separate part of Presser dicta, in order to subvert the constitution.
Bleh says:
Shall we continue to argue semantics, or would you like to just answer my question? If you’d prefer not to answer fine, but continuing to harp over something that wasn’t even a main point (and was in fact only my attempt to lay my biases out on the table) seems kinda intellectually dishonest.
But what do I know? I’m clearly ignorant.
July 4, 2010, 9:24 amrpt says:
Well then you do not believe that the RKBA for self defense is universal or unlimited. Rather, it should only be exercised by those who can pass some financial qualification test, leaving those most vulnerable to crime already completely unprotected. Great.
July 4, 2010, 9:30 amReaderY says:
I’m as likely to weigh in on the subject of abortion as anyone else, and my knee is as likely to jerk as anyone else’s when someone makes a strongly worded emotional statement I don’t agree with, but perhaps that debate might better wait for a thread that’s actually on a related topic. There are certainly plenty.
On the topic of taxes and constitutional rights, separate from the question of whether abortion actually is, should, or will continue to be one, does any jurisdiction impose an abortion tax different from a standard sales tax (if that), and if so, has it ever been challenged? Is there any material or information on the subject of abortion taxes that might actually be relevant to this thread?
July 4, 2010, 9:59 amPat H. says:
There is no Constitutional authorization for the US Fish & Wildlife Service, it’s not an enumerated power. Defunding them is the right thing to do.
The states have the power to take of everything the USFWS does, if we were to funnel our money to them, they’d do a much better, lower cost job.
The Ninth Amendment and the Tenth Amendment cover the rights not enumerated in the Bill of Rights, in fact as can easily be seen, there is no limit within the Second Amendment restricting the purpose of keeping and bearing arms.
There’s an interesting essay in the June 1st edition of The American Conservative, Spiritual Capitalism, which explains pretty well what generates the progressive/fascist mindset.
“The drive to turn all of society into an enterprise association comes from people who have not made the transition to individuality. There is a whole complicated history behind this, but what is important is to recognize that the most serious problem within modern liberal societies is the presence of failed or incomplete individuals. Either unaware of or lacking faith in their ability to exercise self-discipline, incomplete individuals seek escape into the collective identity of communities insulated from the challenge of opportunity. These are people focused on avoiding failure rather than on achieving success. Incomplete individuals identify themselves by feelings of envy, resentment, self-distrust, victimization, and self-pity—in short, an inferiority complex. Anti-Americanism abroad and lack of faith in American Exceptionalism at home are the clearest manifestations.”
July 4, 2010, 10:03 amReaderY says:
Er, uh, what about the navigable waters clause (fish)? What about the plenary power over federal territory (wildlife in federal territory)? What about the commerce clause power (migrating wildlife)? What about the Spending Clause (taxing and spending for general welfare, as distinct from regulation)?
July 4, 2010, 10:21 amPat H. says:
“Navigable Waters”- Applies to defense of the nation against foreign invasion, not fishing and hunting.
“Plenary power” – There is no plenary power.
“Welfare clause” – The general welfare is not an enumerated power, Madison so stated in the Federalist Papers. To paraphrase, “the powers delegated to the national government are few and defined, those held by the states and the people are numerous and indefinite”.
“Commerce clause” – grants no power to the US government, with regard to wildlife, of any kind. The power over migratory waterfowl was granted by the SCOTUS via the Treaty Power, a horrendous and corrupt decision. The SCOTUS cannot create a power for the executive branch that contravenes the Tenth Amendment or any other part of the Constitution via the treaty power.
July 4, 2010, 10:34 amKatahdin says:
The weapons carried by the local SWAT team (typically something like an M-4) qualify as ‘assault rifles’ under most definitions of the term. I’m pretty sure that they carry them for the purpose of close range self defense.
Personally, I’m a shotgun type, perhaps because I’m old and set in my ways, but I will certainly grant there are valid arguments in favor of rifles or handguns.
[I think, too, that any discussion of homicide by assault rifle should acknowledge that many more people are murdered each year with knives than assault rifles (the number of murders by all rifle types and murders by knives are typically in the same ballpark, but not all rifle murders are by 'assault rifles', under any definition of the term.]
July 4, 2010, 10:39 amcboldt says:
– Shall we continue to argue semantics, or would you like to just answer my question? –
July 4, 2010, 10:44 amI think I answered it at July 3, 2010, 6:45 pm. The short version is that advocating the assault weapons ban is irrational. It is to advocate a limiting regulation in reaction to a non-existent and imaginary phantom.
I do thank you for being honest about your bias and intention.
cboldt says:
Pat H. [quoting Spiritual Capitalism]:
That, and the following that you excerpted, is both insightful and incendiary. In my opinion, the description covers hoards of “useful idiots,” but the movers behind the progressive/liberal scheme are in the business of aggregating power and perks to themselves. They are quite “individual” unto themselves, and while they advocate “community,” the community they advocate is for others, the little people, while they get to have the wealth, and the power (weapons) with which to retain the wealth.
July 4, 2010, 10:52 amOrenWithAnE says:
You need to reread Art I — Congress has the power to exercise authority in all lands owned by the Federal government.
July 4, 2010, 11:21 amPat H. says:
Yes, you’re quite correct. That’s the “ruling elite” which all socialisms; particularly fascism and communism, require; the “needful jacobins”.
Still, I think they rationalize the need for the ruling elite, some of whom are they themselves, based on their own failures and incompleteness.
July 4, 2010, 11:22 amTexEd says:
I thought Daley should do a detailed analysis of all the Chicago shooting crimes while the gun prohibition was in place and commit to the same analysis every 5 or 10 years out into the future.
July 4, 2010, 11:52 amThe gun tax would be a variable based on the outcome of this analysis, the more gun crime, the more gun tax. Thus, folks living in the district around Old Town would probably have a lower history of gun crime than those living south of 55th Street and would, therefore, pay lower fees associated with guns.
Heck, we may find that gun crime is much more common among Poles and Germans than among blacks and illegal aliens and that, therefore, Poles and Germans should pay higher guns fees.
PES says:
I’m doing no such thing. As I said, I do not make a claim as to the existence of such a right. Unlike the language I quoted, I’m not saying that there is no such right and that someone is not worthy of a fair hearing because they believe there is such a right or vice versa; I’m saying that no consensus exists among people who study such questions for a living (as opposed to amateur historians who happen to read a few primary sources), and that for someone to ignore the fact of such lack of consensus points in the direction of an ideologue with little regard for inconvenient truths that may contradict his preferred outcome. So, if by “a similar thing . . . but from the other direction,” you mean that I have little respect for people who airily and groundlessly dismiss the possibility that they are not irreproachably correct, then yes, I suppose you got me.
July 4, 2010, 12:03 pmcboldt says:
– So, if by “a similar thing . . . but from the other direction,” you mean that I have little respect for people who airily and groundlessly dismiss the possibility that they are not irreproachably correct, then yes, I suppose you got me. –
July 4, 2010, 12:17 pmMany of the influential collective rights proponents express their “it is only a collective/state right” conclusion as an absolute certainty. See Heller and McDonald. It is impossible for both sides to be correct, and there is no middle ground between the positions. While real-politik dictates temporary concession, between the opposing sides there will be no truce, no relenting, no concession as to the ultimate foundation.
Which side gets to establish policy? Whichever side holds the political power, that’s which. In Chicago and DC, it is the collective rights, “all restrictions are reasonable,” people who will not give an inch to the individual rights proponents.
Doc Merlin says:
I’ll go one step further and say that ANY licensing on guns is unconstitutional and unacceptable. JPFO’s arguments on this are pretty watertight. If the government wishes to collect fees they can use a tax on sales of firearms the same way they do now.
Anyway, licensing results in the state keeping a record of who has and doesn’t have a firearm and is very often throughout history a necessary prerequisite for confiscation.
July 4, 2010, 12:21 pmGaunilo says:
Please tell me you are being satirical. (Possibly we need an emoticon to indicate this for areas of doubt.)
If you honestly believe that the honest people who need firearms the most for a very real and imminent danger should pay the most, then as a Texas I must hope that you moniker indicates that you have advanced degrees in Education. If so, no lunacy would be surprising.
July 4, 2010, 12:24 pmcboldt says:
– I don’t pretend to know whether, in fact and from an originalist perspective, the 2nd Amendment includes an individual right to bear arms. However, a casual dismissal of those who think it does not is absurdly closed-minded and leads me to think that anyone espousing such a view “shouldn’t be taken seriously.” –
July 4, 2010, 12:33 pmI know you aren’t saying exactly this, but perhaps this works to clarify my point. You seem to be saying that unless a person has a similar mind as you, unmade, and either the “collective rights, no individual right” or “individual right” side could be correct as a matter of history and the constitution, then the person with the made mind “shouldn’t be taken seriously.” My point was that this conclusion swings both ways.
As for taking the opponents seriously, in fact, I think it is obvious that each side does consider his opponent to be serious. I think the gun grabbers are very serious in their intentions, and have shown through their actions that they will use force, violent force if necessary, to remove arms from the hands of the public.
Allan Walstad says:
rpt
rpt, I could assume you were joking, or I could assume you are so ignorant as to imagine that the right to keep and bear arms might be a right to acquire them at others’ coerced expense. I guess I need to adjust my assumptions.
July 4, 2010, 12:34 pmcboldt says:
– I could assume you are so ignorant as to imagine that the right to keep and bear arms might be a right to acquire them at others’ coerced expense. I guess I need to adjust my assumptions. –
July 4, 2010, 12:44 pmI looked yesterday, based on a recollection, but didn’t find debates of an early Congress as to funding the acquisition of arms, with public money, with the arms to be distributed to the public. It was a serious debate, and IIRC, the arguments against were pretty fair-minded. For example, that a person who was given an arm would not necessarily care for it (keep it from rusting, rotting, etc.), and the net result would be a waste.
Anyway, see “positive/negative rights” and health care – same idea, and the liberal collectivists have no problem coercing money for the “right to health care.” See too, education, and a host of other items not enumerated as federal powers.
Arthur Kirkland says:
Let alone on public land, which all citizens, one could argue, should be entitled to enjoy without dodging bullets.
July 4, 2010, 12:45 pmAllan Walstad says:
PES (9+ hours ago): You can keep arguing that there’s no individual right to possess firearms, despite the clear wording of 2A, the contemporary explanations, the lack of any cogent contrary interpretation, etc. Go ahead. OR, you can join the rest of us in seriously discussing where the limits to that acknowledged right might be drawn. The situation is what would be the case with the right to freedom of speech. If you don’t even accept that the right exists, don’t expect to be taken seriously by those who are searching for appropriate limits.
July 4, 2010, 12:45 pmRonNYC says:
The Times published a letter from a former federal prosecutor about the Court overturning the handgun ban:
I am flummoxed by the Supreme Court’s recent decision on gun control. The court acknowledges that restraints on gun ownership can be constitutionally imposed in certain spaces like courthouses or schools, but not in larger areas like the city of Chicago where gun violence is well documented.
For example, carrying a loaded handgun into a federal building is prohibited (except for federal agents); all those occupants are thus protected from gun violence. So why then is it impermissible to provide similar protection to other public spaces?
Surely if it is important for people in a courtroom or school to be free from the threat of gun violence, is it not equally important for those of us who do not occupy such protected spaces to be free from the threat of being shot?
==========
July 4, 2010, 12:58 pmSeems to me he has a good point. A goose and gander sort of thing, right? Why not?
Gaunilo says:
RonNYC—Seems to me he has a good point. A goose and gander sort of thing, right? Why not?
Because what the Federal prosecutor said is completely inane. In the court building, the guards and the metal detectors give a quite high assurance that one is in fact safe from gun violence while in the building.
In the US, there are between 200 and 300 million firearms. The bus has left the station, and can’t be recalled. Bans on firearms in cities only means that honest people won’t have them, honest being defined by those who obey all laws, including those that endanger their lives. Criminals will continue to have them, and they will bless the ones who ensure that their victims are unarmed peasants. Unless one could definitively search a city and remove all existing firearms, and create a border regime that ensures that no new ones enter, you cannot create the equivalent of the federal building zone of safety.
Would you like to live in a city that asserted the right to search every building to the level necessary to find every firearm, and submit to routine searches at the city limit also sufficient to find every firearm? Unless you agree to this, the idea that gun bans in a city create gun-free life is only an ephemera in the minds of those willing to give up their rights for some level of perceived safety.
July 4, 2010, 1:22 pmOrenWithAnE says:
You could argue that. Then you could realize that we already have that, as hunters are not running around raking the woods with automatic weapons fire.
Perhaps you’ve never been hunting — you should try it sometime. You’ll find that even a lucky hunter doesn’t take more than a few shots an hour.
July 4, 2010, 1:36 pmLenny says:
Maybe we need an amendment to forbid taxes and fees on our Constitutional Rights. It was done for the poll tax (so any one could vote without having to pay burdensome taxes), so why not for guns (so any one can defend themselves without having to pay burdensome taxes). Poll taxes were put in place to make it hard to vote if you were poor. Taxes and fees on getting a gun are also put in place to make it difficult to protect yourself and your family. People living in poor neighborhoods and high crime areas can barely afford to buy a gun legally, much less pay the fees and taxes a city like Chicago would force on them, this is real discrimination. That is why you can buy a gun on the black market on any street corner in Chicago. Why should someone have to break the law in order to protect themself?
July 4, 2010, 1:41 pmArthur Kirkland says:
Is this principle transferable to discussions concerning morning-after pills, abortion and related subjects?
July 4, 2010, 1:42 pmLou Gots says:
2 points:
First, as to the civilian sporting purpose of so called “assault rifles,” I invite the readership’s attention to the rules for competition with hi-powered rifles. It will be noted that these rules are promulgated by the NRA, which organization, when not dictating legislation, stands in the same relation to sport shooting that F.I.F.A. does to Soccer.
http://www.tngbbs.com/rifle/nra/hp/Index.html
If you care to see the rules, please follow the link to “Section 3–Equipment” to see the definitions of rifles to be used in competition, including M1′s M14 and M16 clones, as well as foreign military types.
Now a gun-grabber may not like these rules, and a pacifist might disapprove of civilians practicing with weapons of war, but that’s what competitive shooting is all about. This is nothing new. It was that way when I got into competition in the 1960′s, and it was that way in the old days of shooting contests on Militia Day. We should remember that the NRA was founded by former Union Generals who wished all Americans to learn to shoot as well as the Confederates they had just faced in battle.
My other comment pertains to government subsidy for shooting. This is by no means far-fetched. In fact, it was once the order of the day. I still have the M1 Garand rifle issued to me by the Department of the Army Director of Civiliam Marksmanship for just that purpose. In fact, the instruction and practice I received in a DCM organization in the 1960′s set me an the road to a lidetime of competitive shooting. We have been there before and we can be there again.
July 4, 2010, 1:46 pmpst314 says:
“Guns may be legal, but they are also undesirable — like smoking”
God made man, but Sam Colt made men equal. And now lgm wants to make men unequal again.
July 4, 2010, 1:51 pmpst314 says:
“But shootings by people who have guns but shouldn’t are a tad more common.”
Utterly false. Are you simply repeating the falsehoods so common in “progressive” circles, or are you aware of the evidence that contradicts your assertion?
“Even those accidents where the toddler is playing in daddy’s closet are more common.”
Grossly, absurdly false.
July 4, 2010, 1:53 pmAble to read and comprehend says:
Sheez folks, what is the problem with understanding “Shall Not Be Infringed”?
Is the educational system in this country that far gone?
/disgust
July 4, 2010, 1:57 pmAble to read and comprehend says:
Sheez folks, what is the problem with understanding “Shall Not Be Infringed”?
Is the educational system in this country that far gone?
/disgust
July 4, 2010, 1:57 pmWally says:
From what I can gather from the whole mess is this…
July 4, 2010, 1:59 pmmy owning a gun is not a privilege like an automobile,my owning a firearm or firearms if a entity wants to register it ,where is the legal excuse to charge more than once per firearm for life,
Actually if it is allowed to be registered it is no longer a right,it has become a privilege .If I must pay to keep a firearm it has become a privilege it is no longer a right to keep or bear .
Arthur Kirkland says:
Hunters periodically shoot houses, each other and similarly unintended victims in my neck of the woods. They also reliably purchase substantial quantities of intoxicating beverages on their way into the woods. A “few shots an hour” is a few too many from the perspective of citizens who reasonably desire to enjoy public lands without dodging bullets.
A shot fired in self-defense is one thing; a shot fired for the hell of it in uncontrolled circumstances, or at a deer or squirrel on public property, is another, particularly with respect to the Constitution. Would a constitutional right to fire for sport on public property derive from the Second Amendment? From another provision?
I would not expect many people to argue for a constitutional right on public land to fell trees and lug firewood home; to compete at distance and accuracy with hand grenades; to remove fish for any reason; to dig and haul fill; or to sit in a tree and indiscriminately hurl rocks toward the ground. Why would hunting with a firearm differ?
One can make strong arguments, in my view, for the right to possess and use a reasonable firearm for self-defense in the home. One can make lesser, but nonetheless reasonable, arguments concerning discharging firearms in controlled circumstances on private property. But a constitutional right to discharge firearms for sport on public property, or to shoot and take animals from public property? That would require a surprising explanation, one strong enough to overcome the interests of people who wish to occupy public property without being shot.
July 4, 2010, 2:07 pmbroken window says:
I believe it was one of history’s most accomplished Progressives who said that liberty is so precious it must be rationed. Taxed too, as the exercise of individual liberties always looks so messy (and expensive!) to domineering central planners.
My take is this: the people should be allowed to tax politicians for the negative externalities of their actions/inactions. Only then can they start talking about “how much it costs them” for me to protect myself, my family and my neighbors. With leverage to hold them accountable, at least the negotiation will have a chance of fairness.
July 4, 2010, 2:13 pmPES says:
You can learn to read and then realize that is not the argument I’m making, or you could continue to insulate yourself from reality.
July 4, 2010, 2:21 pmBruce says:
In fact, there is very little by way of restricting what weapons a citizen may possess. Not necessarily be allowed to “carry”, since most of these are rather large and unable to be concealed. But Americans in states which ALLOW the Second Amendment to be followed do allow – with the proper licenses – such things as machine guns, short barreled rifles or shotguns, and other more advanced weaponry. “Assault” rifle is a convenient but misused term – most are simply semi-automatic rifles comparable in every way to many hunting rifles save one thing – the way they LOOK. Functioning is the same – they only LOOK “mean and nasty.” Does that mean everything someone doesn’t like the look of should be banned? In that case, I don’t like the looks of Nancy Pelosi, so I insist she be banned. Absurd? Of course, but the situation is similar.
People forget that the Founders never anticipated such things as automatic rifles, hand grenades, missile launchers, etc. In that time a weapon (arms) consisted of flintlock muzzle-loading muskets of pistols. I see no valid reason why a license should be required for anyone to have such weapons in their home, as many states provide. I see no valid reason why properly vetted citizens of sound mind should not be able to carry a concealed handgun for protection without having a license. A quick NCIC check should be all that is required to purchase. I strongly advocate persons who do want to carry a concealed handgun undergo some kind of familiarization or qualifying instruction, though, whether this is required or otherwise.
July 4, 2010, 2:27 pmAD says:
Apples and Oranges.
July 4, 2010, 2:29 pmGun buyers pay the gun seller, those desiring an abortion pay the abortionist.
The abortionist does not pass on part of his fee to the government as a specific proceedure tax, yet the gun manufacturer has to pay an excise tax to the government for the privilege of entering a firearm, and/or ammunition, into commerce.
DS says:
Ok, if a tax on gun ownership is reasonable to help pay for the cost to “society”, then shouldn’t the gun owners get a credit if it can be established that as a law-abiding citizen, they are not likely to incur a cost to “society”?
How much should a gun owner receive if they, in the exercise of their rights to self-defense, they ice a repeat felon, thus avoiding the cost of court and incarceration?
If you are not prepared to reward the individual for exercising rights, then do not tax him for exercising the same rights.
July 4, 2010, 2:38 pmRonNYC says:
So the basis of the court decision is that there are too many guns to adequately control them? But, apparently, as you seem to concede, if you can control them, that’s ok, right?
July 4, 2010, 2:43 pmWilliam Van Alstyne says:
I think Gene Volokh’s review (of “taxes” on firearms and ammunition) is essentially sound. To the extent “sales” of firearms may need to bear a sales tax uniform in rate and merely uniform in its general applicability at the point of retail sale of other products, I think it likely to be upheld..and properly so. An adverse rate (e.g., 3% standardly, but 5% of price on “guns”), however, should render the “discriminatory” tax invalid…just as the Court has long held, in respect to “taxes” and “First” Amendment products and sales of First Amendment goods (e.g., newspapers, books, etc.).
July 4, 2010, 3:04 pmFurther, for the momment, your affiant sayeth naught, except, again, to offer “two cheers” for MacDonald itself.
Wm. Van Alstyne
juris imprudent says:
bleh, you cited the VPC but apparently were unable to find http://www.guncite.com? Were you actually looking, or only looking for confirmation?
July 4, 2010, 3:06 pmGaunilo says:
RonNYC
No, the basis of the decision is that the right to keep and bear arms in defense of the self and the nation is a basic right of the people, and existed before the adaptation of the constitution.
If we could create the theoretical bubble of your gun-free world, you would now have the weak at the mercy of the strong, the female at the mercy of the male, and the old at the mercy of the young. And the police can come along later and arrest the perpetrator. Meanwhile the victim is the victim, and the courts can administer justice.
If you want to be perpetually weak and defenseless, that is your choice. I choose to bear the responsibility of my own personal safety, and I demand that I have adequate means to do so. I am too old to look forward to defending myself against punks with my bare hands or a knife.
Please remember now that you go to sleep each night in NYC with at least a million firearms on the island of Manhattan, and the last reliable estimate I saw over 200,000 junkies. There are places in NYC outside whatever comfortable bubble you live in where the means to defend yourself is not a luxury. Any people like you are very happy to leave those living in them defenseless.
July 4, 2010, 3:06 pmgeokstr says:
Right.
One is like, you know, explicitly written into the text of the Bill of Rights, and the other is the result of doing wishful legal spectroscopy on the wisps of previously undetected emanations from nebulous penumbras unknown to the founders, not to mention that even proponents of abortion admit that the reasoning in Roe v Wade was bizarre, while overturning laws to the contrary in over 30 states.
Oh, I get it – proponents of both call them “rights”, therefore they must be equivalent. My bad.
July 4, 2010, 3:08 pmLarryA says:
The 36 states that don’t bother with any form of gun registration are doing just fine without it.
According to the National Shooting Sports Foundation (The gun industry organization) What the AR-15 does look like is the latest iteration of a modern rifle that employs advanced technology and ergonomic design to produce an exceptionally reliable, rugged and accurate sporting rifle. Produced in different configurations and chambered in a variety of calibers, AR-type rifles not only can be used for, indeed are exceptionally well suited to, many types of hunting, precision target shooting as well as personal protection. In recent years, AR-type rifles have become among the most popular sporting rifles sold in the United States.
The main Constitutional problem with firearm registration and licensing, including punitive taxes, is that it is too often used to selectively enforce a gun ban.
The same was true of the poll tax. There’s nothing inherently wrong about paying a small fee to cover the cost of registering to vote. The problem was that when a black person went to register the office was out of forms, or those forms were only available in the office across town, or the person that handled those forms was on vacation, or if the form actually got filled out and submitted it got “lost.” Somehow white folks never had the same problem. As a result of the blatant misuse of poll taxes, we banned them via a Constitutional Amendment.
Look how most of the “discretionary” gun licensing schemes are run. If you aren’t in a politically connected group, then you get turned down because you don’t “need” a gun. The list of licensed persons in several jurisdictions, including NYC, Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and others is blatant evidence of discrimination against minorities that wouldn’t be tolerated for any other purpose.
Given the long and sordid history of gun registration, it should be as unconstitutional as the poll tax.
July 4, 2010, 3:09 pmcboldt says:
– The Times published a letter from a former federal prosecutor about the Court overturning the handgun ban … Seems to me he has a good point. –
July 4, 2010, 3:21 pmMy thought is that you and the prosecutor are unlikely to be persuaded otherwise.
cboldt says:
– I think Gene Volokh’s review (of “taxes” on firearms and ammunition) is essentially sound. –
July 4, 2010, 3:27 pmIt’s incomplete. It needs to address Minneapolis Star v Minnesota, 460 U.S. 575 (1983) and Murdock v. PA, 319 US 105 (1942), as well as US v. Miller, which is directly on the point of the constitutionality of taxes on firearms.
SC Mike says:
It appears that not enough gun nuts from states that honor the notion of liberty participate here. Vermont has no registration requirements, not even for carrying concealed weapon. Around 40 states have “shall issue” concealed weapons permits (CWPs). Do any of you prefer the or California system wherein the local sheriff, an elected official, decides who gets the CWP? Democrats and VIPs do, not the poor business-owner who carts the day’s receipts to the bank in a car with a “McCain / Palin” bumper sticker.
Firearms registration is not the norm across the nation. Citizens may own as many firearms as they want / can afford and may even own and use fully automatic firearms (a/k/a machine guns) if they jump through certain federal hoops and pay the appropriate taxes. In South Carolina, CWP-holders don’t even have to wait for the telephonic background check because possessing the permit serves as proof of compliance when purchasing a handgun from a dealer.
Firearms and ammunition are subject to a federal excise tax, usually paid by the manufacturer or through dealers / distributors. Details here.
Firearms users follow a simple rule with guns and alcohol: do the shooting first, then drink to celebrate the hunt or trophy after the weapons are cleared and ammunition stored; tobacco may be used throughout. Lawyers don’t drink before or during courtroom sessions, but have been known to quaff assorted adult beverages afterwards, no? The same principle applies.
While hunting for many is sport, it’s a necessity to many in the country’s rural areas. A deer or two may be all the protein some families get during the winter. As distasteful as some may find the notion of crawling through the woods or staying motionless for hours in a deer stand, it’s an obligation to many, not a pleasure thing. And as for hunting on public land, what else is out there in most of the West and Alaska? (BTW, many federal lands have shooting ranges available to the public. They are not fancy and not staffed, but the trash does get picked up and a road-grader once or twice a year to groom the shooting lanes.) For example, Uwharrie National Forest offers hiking, camping, biking (motorized or not), 4WD trails, boating, hunting, fishing, horseback riding, shooting range, and bird watching.
Cities and counties do impose reasonable restrictions on discharging weapons, but in rural areas such regulation is rare, enabling folks to shoot on their own property whenever they want or pool resources to buy land for a hunt club. Some folks may not like that, but freedom has its costs…
As others have pointed out, the assault weapons ban was BS. Automatic weapons (one pull of the trigger, continuous firing of bullets) are already restricted, so the AW ban merely prohibited the sale of guns that looked scary.
The threat of confiscatory taxation of firearms and ammo is low, but Cass Sunstein will probably come up with some ideas. The nanny-staters will continue to try to limit gun rights by imposing unreasonable restrictions on ammunition. Recent regulatory attempts to make ammunition difficult to sell and store were discovered and stopped, but these jerks don’t sleep. (The old gun power, black powder, can be dangerous, but modern ammunition uses propellants with low volatility; ammunition is safely sent through the US Postal Service.)
The really great thing about the NRA is that they have a single purpose — protecting gun rights — and that means that its lobbying does not impose huge costs on the public the way that other lobbying usually does. I know that many assert that gun-ownership is expensive to society, but so are many activities that are constitutionally protected.
July 4, 2010, 3:53 pmPat H. says:
That, of course, won’t do in this case, the right to keep and bear arms, as a subset of the intrinsic right to self defense, isn’t subject to arguments of utility nor to the democratic process. If the intrinsic right were, instead, a privilege extended by the state, arguments of utility could be made.
The right of self defense, as a right it is yours as a result of your human existence, cannot be legitimately taken away, restricted, or interfered with at all.
July 4, 2010, 4:04 pmArthur Kirkland says:
This reminds me of Thornton Mellon’s observation concerning the appropriate location of a business described in a professor’s classroom hypothetical: Fantasyland.
July 4, 2010, 4:13 pmSC Mike says:
I stand, er, sit corrected. I should have qualified “Firearms users” by stating “Firearms users who want to live long and productive lives.”
Even out in the boonies folks are sensitive to alcohol misuse. It’s even come to this: even fishing aficionados demand that the driver abstain when out in a boat! Those along for the ride don’t mind a hook or two in the ear because they can at least catch what they want in the beer-cooler, but the pilot has to maintain a sober mien, in more ways than one.
That’s why I spent a one-week vacation on the coast this year where I could use the nice long pier and drag a high-capacity cooler with big wheels. Unfortunately, the cooler was lighter than my head at the end of each session. But, if fishing were easy, they’d call it “catching.”
July 4, 2010, 4:37 pmPaul says:
I don’t want a gun for crime. Or hunting. I want it for political reasons. Against humans. Political humans that are attracted to government and power.
July 4, 2010, 4:38 pmvegas says:
July 4, 2010, 5:21 pmcboldt says:
on the question of the federal government appropriating money to provide arms to members of the general public:
From Chapter Five, Jeffersonian Militia and the War of 1812, of History of the Militia and National Guard, by John K. Mahon
The text of the 1808 act, and many others, is in http://www.history.army.mil/books/revwar/ss/repdoc.htm
Another interesting read, mostly on the point of the weakness of a general militia, but corroborates the feds appropriating funds to arm the public: The militia as organized under the constitution and its value to the nation as a military asset (Army War College, 1915)
July 4, 2010, 5:25 pmSean Caranna says:
In Harper v. Virginia Board of Elections, The U.S. Supreme Court noted that “a state violates the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution whenever it makes the affluence of the voter or payment of any fee an electoral standard. Voter qualifications have no relation to wealth.”
The 24th Amendment was not applicable because it only protected federal elections from voter fees, not state and local elections. The equal protection clause was violated because you effectively lost your right if you didn’t have enough money to spare. $2
The analogy to marriage license fees is also fundamentally flawed. Unlike marriage, there is no documenting of a change of legal status, name change, and record keeping requirement for the right to bear arms.
July 4, 2010, 5:25 pmGabby says:
My first thought upon reading the heading of this thread was the similarities of what the people in charge in Chicago are now up to relative to personal firearms ownership, and how the very same sorts of folks in the South once managed to keep “undesirables” from voting.
As has been pointed out previously in this thread, that behavior was made unconstitutional. A proper reading and understanding of “shall not be infringed” makes what the Chicago bunch is up to quite illegal without further additions to the Constitution. A significant sales/use tax, above and beyond what is regularly collected to fund the local government’s activities (which presumably was at one point voted into law by those being taxed) is clearly an infringement on the exercise of an enumerated right.
July 4, 2010, 5:31 pmDave Hardy says:
The Federal tax on guns and ammo poses an interesting question. Whereas the tax in the Minneapolis Star case was meant to punish that newspaper, the Federal Pittman-Robertson tax is earmarked for conservation (it may only cover huntable game, not sure) and for building shooting ranges. While there is a tax on the right, its proceeds are all used to benefit exercise of the right.
July 4, 2010, 5:32 pmSean Caranna says:
Hunting game and visiting a government owned shooting range have nothing to do with the main reason for right to bear arms. Self Defense.
July 4, 2010, 5:40 pmGaunilo says:
There approximately 80 million gun owners in the US. Less than 20 million of them hunt.
A tax on all firearms and ammunition is really not a tax on hunters only. Some hunters (shotgun hunters come to mind) may fire a lot of rounds of ammo a year, but most rifle hunters will not fire more than five rounds per year hunting, and maybe 2-3 times that much getting ready.
Non-hunting shooters generally fire a lot more rounds during a typical range visit than a hunter fires in a year.
July 4, 2010, 5:55 pmKatahdin says:
Arthur, from a wildlife biology perspective, you get to choose from:
a)every few years in late spring, the woods are filled with emaciated, starving deer
July 4, 2010, 6:08 pmb)we reintroduce large carnivores, e.g. wolves, across the country
c)we put up with hunters
d)we hire government hunters – many thousands of them
Robert says:
I’m starting to think that Arthur’s only conception of people that think or live differently than him is that of a hideously misshapen stereotype. We have a word for those type of people: bigots.
July 4, 2010, 6:36 pmLarryA says:
But Chicago has gun control, and has had it for decades. There shouldn’t be any gun violence. That’s what we were promised: Just pass the “common sense” gun control laws and gun violence would go away.
But at least government buildings are safe, right? Ever heard of James Davis, shot to death in the NYC City Hall? And Harvey Milk and George Moscone, assassinated in the San Francisco City Hall?
Then there’s the ultimate in non-violent weapon-free zones; prisons.
We can argue endlessly about how constitutional gun control is, and what common sense says it ought to accomplish. The fact remains, gun control doesn’t work.
Pittman-Robertson is a major source of funding for state wildlife agencies. It covers more than firearms, you also pay the excise tax on bows and arrows and fishing equipment like rods and reels. Another major source of wildlife funding is hunting and fishing licenses and related fees/permits like duck stamps. A third source is the hunting lease fees paid to landowners that allow them to keep land suitable for wildlife. Then there are the organizations like Ducks Unlimited, which raise funds to establish management areas. We’ve been paying our way since the 1930s.
Any time you keep habitat suitable for huntable species like whitetail deer, it will also be suitable for rabbits, buzzards, rattlesnakes, butterflies, and so forth. It’s all the same ecology.
So? I can use the RKBA for any legitimate purpose. Just like Freedom of the Press protects the sports section and the classified ads, as well as hard news.
July 4, 2010, 6:45 pmcboldt says:
History of Congress – April 1808, p.2175-2176 starts a debate (maybe the only record of debate, I don’t know) relating to passage of an act making provision for arming and equipping the whole body of the militia of the United States.
July 4, 2010, 7:03 pmOn the next pair of pages, Mr. R. stated “no objection to reimburse those citizens who have, under the laws of the respective States, provided their own arms.”
“Mr. Smilie said if the Government were to be the holder of these arms and have it in its power to disarm the people at its pleasure, this would be an armed Government still, but not an armed people.”
Recommended reading. Objections are in the nature of (my words, not quoting the record)”if the government buys/provides the guns, then it might also take them away, and that is no good.”
Hary Schell says:
The factual result of efforts to make it difficult to get a weapon, through cost hikes, difficult paperwork and interminable delay, all creations of government, is often disarming a specific racial and economic group, those who live in the inner city are more often minority and at the low end of the economic spectrum.
The “may issue” CCW policy of Los Angeles County Sheriff Lee Baca, and the City of Los Angeles result in those without means and a political voice, most often in the line of fire, are least likely to get a permit. Talk about “redlining” by bnaks? Sort CCW’s by zip code in Los Angeles. Then sort violent crime. An inverse correlation. Then sort nominal average income, or race, and those graphs adhere quite. That the solons disarming the poor and minorities keep telling them a cop on the phone is better than a gun in the hand, you have to hand it to them, great salesman. Disgusting, but Democrat.
July 4, 2010, 7:05 pmcboldt says:
Annals of Congress, House of Representatives, 10th Congress, 1st Session Pages 2191 & 2192
On reading these pages, I am reminded just how determined the gun grabbers are, to rewrite history. Finding and reading the source documents is an effort that few people bother with, and so the people are gullible. It is low character indeed, that takes advantage of gullibility.
July 4, 2010, 7:32 pmSean Caranna says:
No argument there. My point was that you can’t tax the right to bear arms to support hunting and public shooting ranges.
July 4, 2010, 7:37 pmArthur Kirkland says:
Sounds like a situation for reasoned rules (rather than claims of constitutional rights, entitlements to freeload or freedom from regulation conduct or equipment). Enable hunters to hunt in prescribed areas during set seasons with strong penalties for violations of clear rules (no “shooting is fine unless the property is posted,” no alcohol in the system, no shooting within a bullet’s carry of a dwelling, reasonable weapons and ammunition, reasonable fees and taxes, registration and ballistics information for weapons to be used on public land, etc.).
I would support special accommodations for people who hunt for food, even on public land. But one of the reasons I endorse hunting restrictions is that I have seen alcohol-toting, authority-disdaining, judgment-challenged, trigger-happy recreational hunters in action.
July 4, 2010, 7:53 pmOriginal Intent says:
Fees are permissible since there is a presumed privilege (federal excise tax) on firearms and ammunition. This privilege is the basis of all legal gun control in this country. By insertion of a privilege into something the People have a rights to own you take it out of the wholly a right arena and move it into a government privilege arena with all of the accompanying regulations. These excise taxes need to be properly challenged and struck down so we can do away with modern gun control measures.
July 4, 2010, 8:52 pmJ. Aldridge says:
Yep. Notice it is about arming the militia and not whether people have arms to protect against intruders at home or for hunting.
July 4, 2010, 9:13 pmMichael Ejercito says:
One question the Supreme Court will have to settle is what weapons are “arms”.
Pretty much anything can be used as a weapon, even an open container of sulfuric acid .
Would that be an “arm”?
Funny how police misuse never leads to disarmament, let alone disbandment, of police.
Imagine if a state treated same-sex “marriages” that way; permitting same-sex “marriages”, but only to people who get a special license from an official that has total discretion over whom to issue same-sex “marriage” licenses. And as it turns out, same-sex “marriage” licenses happen to be handed out the same way CCW permits are in Los Angeles County.
Such a scheme would not pass rational basis review.
Not to mention that it would create a huge black market, and not to mention that the identifying marks would be destroyed should the bullet strike something- like a brick wall or human bone.
July 4, 2010, 9:14 pmjuris imprudent says:
But one of the reasons I endorse hunting restrictions is that I have seen alcohol-toting, authority-disdaining, judgment-challenged, trigger-happy recreational hunters in action.
AK, I will agree, there are those types out there as unfortunate as it is. I hope you would find, and agree, that they are the exception and not the rule.
As to the point you raised earlier about transferability, I have no problem with seeing the right to self determination in self defense or abortion, etc. as proceeding from the 9th (though SCotUS does not). The 2nd establishes an additional line against encroachment on the RKBA.
July 4, 2010, 9:23 pmTim Starr says:
False. Until recently, cops didn’t carry guns in England, but firearms did exist. It’s only since guns have been banned in England that the cops have had to start carrying guns.
July 4, 2010, 9:25 pmTim Starr says:
Copyrights aren’t mandatory for publishing.
July 4, 2010, 9:32 pmMikee says:
I must address a detail of the Heller and McDonald decisions that is fast becoming an accepted “fact” although it is actually not so. Sclia writes in Heller’s majority opinion that “Although we do not undertake an exhaustive historical analysis today of the full scope of the
Second Amendment, nothing in our opinion should be taken to cast doubt on longstanding prohibitions on the possession of firearms by felons and the mentally ill, or laws forbidding the carrying of firearms in sensitive places such as schools and government buildings, or laws imposing conditions and qualifications on the commercial sale of arms.” (26) Footnote 26 reads “We identify these presumptively lawful regulatory measures only as examples; our list does not purport to be exhaustive.”
I note that none of the identified “presumptively lawful” regulatory measures Scalia listed was even before the court for any decision on their constitutionality. These regulatory measures are “presumptively” accepted to be lawful by the Supreme Court – and other branches of government – only because the regulations are not under any investigation regarding their constitutionality – yet.
So to RonNYC: give it some time.
July 4, 2010, 9:34 pmcboldt says:
– Notice it is about arming the militia and not whether people have arms to protect against intruders at home or for hunting. –
July 4, 2010, 9:49 pmI think because self care as to intruders and hunting (which was regulated then) goes without saying. I noticed the remark about threats to freedom potentially coming from the government itself, as why every member of the public should be armed independently of government largess.
cboldt says:
– I note that none of the identified “presumptively lawful” regulatory measures Scalia listed was even before the court for any decision on their constitutionality. –
July 4, 2010, 9:52 pmAnd they won’t be, either. The lower courts and Circuit Courts will “do the dirty work” of upholding these restrictions, which are NOT in fact “long standing.”
Already been done on the 1934 NFA and Heller’s radical dismantling of the Miller precedent. See Hamblen. cert. denied.
Tim Starr says:
Riot control. Lots of LA residents needed assault weapons to protect themselves when both the LAPD & National Guard withdrew from the Rodney King riots. Those who already had them were safe. Those who tried to get ‘em only to find out there was a 3-week waiting period were screwed. The higher rate of fire and higher-capacity magazines of “assault weapons” make them perfect for protection against large numbers of people, unlike revolvers or shotguns.
July 4, 2010, 9:58 pmDon Meaker says:
In a world where guns did not exist, police would only be able to act as police during a few years while they were at their physical peak, and more police would be needed, because knives/arrows/swords/spears are quiet in operation, compared to guns which are loud and usually function as a widely broadcast call for help.
Guns permit a old guy like me to have a good chance against a young thug or three. Thugs would not normally begin a robbery with gun fire as that would attract attention from the honest people (with guns). Since professional criminals would have to commit multiple crimes, a moderate chance of stopping the criminal is sufficient for the honest person, but an overweening probability of not being injured is required for the thug/robber.
July 4, 2010, 9:59 pmUriel says:
Yeah! What he said.
“Gun License Fees and the Right to Keep and Bear Arms”? Gun Licence FEES!?! FEES?! How about Gun Licenses. A LICENSE to a RIGHT!!!????!! A WHAT!?!
You know, I went to Law School. There they told me that the purpose of Law School was to get students to “think like a Lawyer”. I graduated; but, in my case, they failed in their purpose …. thank God.
Clearly though, they succeeded with you.
“Substantial Burdens”? Really? A Burden on a Constitutionally guaranteed right has to be “substantial”? A RIGHT is a RIGHT. Rights precede and SUPERCEDE the U.S. Constitution, and the U.S. Government and their Licenses and Fees. How about NO burdens on my rights?!
And how about you stop “thinking like a lawyer” and start thinking like a FREE MAN.
Come out of the shadows. Come out of the penumbras. And from the shadows of penumbras, penumbras of shadows, shadows of shadows, more shadowy parts of generally shade places, and the DARKNESS of conceding to the use of “words of art” created by Leftists to destroy the meaning of the U.S. Constitution, befuddle the Rule of Law, and enslave FREE MEN.
July 4, 2010, 11:00 pmRKV says:
The militia has three constitutionally defined missions (law enforcement, internal security against rebellion and military operations in the event of invasion) per Article 1 Section 8. A militia (which the 2nd Amendment calls a “necessity”) can hardly be described as “well-regulated” if it is incapable of conducting operations by virtue of its equipment being illegal for the members of the militia (effectively all able-bodied males 17-45 and some women [10USC 311]) to own, train with or transport. Regulations which disarm the militia cannot be constitutional, nor can those which prevent its effective service by limiting the right only to self-defense. So, talk time, place and manner all you want. Talk intermediate or strict scrutiny all you want (since that’s all that’s left after Heller and McDonald). Just don’t let’s lose site of what Miller said (and I recognize how [deliberately?] misinterpreted that decision is) – “when called for service … [they] were expected to appear bearing arms supplied by themselves and of the kind in common use at the time.”
July 4, 2010, 11:00 pmjack burton says:
None of which actually have to do with “writing” the letter, eh.
You buy a stamp and pay for it, I buy a gun and pay for it. You pay no tax on the stamp, and I pay a $300 tax/fee for the reason that Daley doesn’t like guns. And you somehow want to declare that “equivalent”?
July 4, 2010, 11:12 pmAllan Walstad says:
Take “you” as a general “you,” PES. Like, “You can search high, or you can search low, but you’ll never….” That sort of “you.” Or you can read the main statement as “One who doesn’t even accept that the right exists should not expect to be taken seriously by those who are searching for appropriate limits.”
July 4, 2010, 11:14 pmSC Mike says:
I think we can dispense with the “militia” discussions now that the Supremes have ruled that gun ownership is an individual right.
Some folks here are unaware of the Civilian Marksmanship Program (CMP) whereby surplus military weapons are sold to citizens as part of its efforts to
The CMP is a federally chartered 501 (c) (3) corporation Details here. So policy-makers and enough politicians over the years have recognized that infantry weapons in the hands of civilians is so desirable that they have actively encouraged it. Must be the Swiss influence… This year they’ve been holding their five-year Eidgenössische Schützenfest, the national shooting competition, with 2300 teams made up over 45,000 individual shooters who brought their own government-issued firearms to the matches. See the pictures here — I particularly like the McDonald’s ad with the targets.
Not a lot of hunting fans here either, but fortunately they don’t have a say. Hunting is regulated, usually lightly, by the states. Bother hunters too much and they will mobilize and vote you out of office.
“Select fire” means that a firearm can fire in automatic mode: it will keep on firing as long as the trigger is depressed, as in machine gun. “Semi-automatic” operation means that a firearm fires, ejects the spent casing, and loads another bullet, but the trigger must be depressed to fire again: one bullet is fired for each pull of the trigger. As Vegas pointed out, the true definition of an assault weapon is one capable of select fire, or automatic fire as what’s called a machine gun does. The assault weapons ban, however, prohibited semi-automatic rifles that looked scary. It was stupid and merely limited consumers’ choices.
“Weapon-free zones” are “free-fire zones” for bad guys, places where they can be assured that the law-abiding are not armed. The norm in the US is to not require gun registration, to allow with minimal hassle law-abiding folks who so desire to carry concealed weapons. That the officeholders in the city of Chicago continue to leave their citizens at the mercy of outlaws is unconscionable, but much of what happens in that corrupt city is anyway.
Cite the British all you want, they are a different country with a different history and different cultural mix, and lack a constitution. Moreover, I seem to remember that we had some differences with them around 234 years ago and resolved to let them go their own way, however mistake that way was.
July 4, 2010, 11:16 pmjack burton says:
Bleh sez: I feel like you think I’m stupider, with respect to firearms than I actually am.
Jack replies: Just commenting on your comments.
Bleh sez: But nonetheless, I have yet to see any special use for “assault weapons,” for self-defense purposes, which could not also be served by a normal shotgun or handgun.
Jack replies: We’ve already established that you have no clue as to what an “assault weapons” is so it is no surprise to use that you find no use for one.
But if I’m in New Orleans with the flood water coming and rising, the power is out and I’ve got the only working generator on the block which is powering the electricity for me and my neighbors I would choose the 30 round rifle over the ten round handgun or the single shot shotgun when the mob shows up outside the door to take the generator away from us just because they think they are bigger and stronger. You may choose differently for you and your family.
Bleh sez: Nor do I see any reason to take those types of weapons on a hunting trip.
Jack Replies: Well, real hunters certainly do and I would take their word for it over yours. As noted by the October 2009 issue of Outdoor Life declaring what you would consider an “assault weapon” as one of the ten best hunting rifles of the year. Please tell us your expertise in hunting so that we know your “reasons” can trump those who are professionals in hunting and writing about it.
Bleh sez:
Assault rifles are designed for battlefield conditions, not so much for close range self-defense. As such, it would seem to me, based on my obviously ignorant point of view, that they would be of use to 1) enthusiasts, and 2) people trying to kill a bunch of people.
Jack replies: Do you know what the Mauser Model 1898 action is? No? Did not think so.
It was designed for the German government to use in war rifles. To kill people. Many people. Dead. Lasted thru quite a few wars. Very popular. Many people killed in battle. Dead. It is also the very same action used in many of the best loved and most bought hunting rifles thruout the world, including America. Dependable, accurate, and very solid. But you didn’t know all that, eh. You think that rifles have always been in one of two groups… those that kill people and those that somehow never killed people.
Bleh sez:
I would hope that there would be some sort of regulations that could be enacted to attempt to allow the maximum number of gun collectors/enthusiasts to enjoy these weapons, while simultaneously trying to limit the number of guns that get into the hands of group 2.
Jack replies: Well, we have 20,000 laws on the books already concerning guns… I guess we can put one more on there that says bad people shouldn’t do bad things with guns. You never know…
I don’t mean to be this snarky but most people who drive a car would never think of going up to a NASCAR racer and offering advice about how to win an upcoming race… but everyone who has seen a TV show with cops and robbers thinks they are an expert on “assault weapons” and are qualified to give advice to everyone else who actually knows something about them.
I don’t care if you like them or not… or want them or not… I just would rather you think about what you are posting before you reveal you don’t know about the subject instead of afterwards.
July 4, 2010, 11:31 pmSC Mike says:
Uriel -
Right on.
I’ve not had the pleasure of law school, so I don’t know how a lawyer thinks. But Gaunilo’s attitude strikes me as tyrannical, and I’ve never found much use for tyrants. Perhaps he regards his job as being that of “Persecuting attorney.”
July 4, 2010, 11:38 pmjack burton says:
There are a few weeks of hunting season when hunters get to enjoy the public land for which they are largely responsible for funding. In every state the fees and taxes associated with selling ammo and licenses are used to purchase and maintain the very “public” land you are posting about.
The are heavily regulated as to time, date, place, and manner. Look up the Dept. of Natural Resources for your own state if you don’t believe me.
Yes, there are yahoos who like to screw it up for everyone. When you have a way to remove these people from all aspects of society then get back to us.
But we notice you don’t call for an end to everyone driving a car just because some drunk drivers use our “public roads.”
July 4, 2010, 11:41 pmRKV says:
“I think we can dispense with the “militia” discussions now that the Supremes have ruled that gun ownership is an individual right. ” Not really. It’s still the law of the land, and it informs us of our duties as citizens and the scope of the right. The 2nd ain’t about hunting, nor is it just about having a single shot pistol that you can’t take into your garage or front yard, for which you pay $100 a year tax, are required to have liability insurance, keep in a locked container and submit to mental and practical examination by the police.
July 4, 2010, 11:42 pmAllan Walstad says:
Good question, which I half suspected some sharp guy like yourself would ask. As an intellectual matter, I’d say yes, it does apply pretty much across the board, at least to this extent: Where people who support a right (particularly one which has been recognized by the Supreme Court) are discussing its possible limits, they are not going to be willing to be bothered by someone who is trying to use the discussion as a way of still arguing against the very existence of the right. ["Sorry, been there, done that, we're talking about something else now."] Politically, however, one may need to negotiate. If the would-be gun-banners control X number of votes in Congress, then they will be able to influence what sorts of restrictions might be imposed.
July 4, 2010, 11:43 pmcboldt says:
– I think we can dispense with the “militia” discussions now that the Supremes have ruled that gun ownership is an individual right. –
July 4, 2010, 11:43 pmThat ruling is tenuous, and a significant fraction of the powers that be are fully invested in a belief either that the “individual right” interpretation is in error, or must be “lied into oblivion.”
That SCOTUS watched the Circuit Courts butcher Miller and Presser for decades, and never corrected the error is unconscionable, too. No part of the federal government comes out of this, as “just” or “honest.” And they aren’t going to admit any error, either.
cboldt says:
– I’ve not had the pleasure of law school, so I don’t know how a lawyer thinks. –
July 4, 2010, 11:57 pmIt’s a non-uniform population; but the general “think like a lawyer” schtick is to be disciplined in logical analysis, and versed in a mess of “terms of art” that apply to a wide variety of fact patterns.
A good lawyer is also able to distinguish what the law says and how it will be applied, and separate that from a full awareness that the law is not faithful to what the law simultaneously claims is a bedrock principle.
Most lawyers say the law does not have radical disconnects between bedrock principle and application. They are wrong. The law is, at bottom, an exercise in brute force, sometimes physical, sometimes “mental gymnastics.” The ruling party is not always clear – could be Congress, could be the Court, could be the executive. It is RARELY the people. The lawyers (and courts) do not want the people/jury making decisions of law.
But I’ll go back, and say that to “think like a lawyer,” and to be successful as one, it is essential to “play the game on the cheater’s rules.”
cboldt says:
SC Mike: — Gaunilo’s attitude strikes me as tyrannical –
July 5, 2010, 12:06 amYou’ve made an error in attribution, and incorrectly pigeonholed Gaunilo.
SC Mike says:
The Truth About Assault Weapons Part 1An excellent presentation by a California cop.
The Truth About Assault Weapons Part 2Continued.
Assault Rifles: Behind The PropagandaSome red meat.
July 5, 2010, 12:12 amcboldt says:
– Most lawyers say the law does not have radical disconnects between bedrock principle and application. They are wrong. –
July 5, 2010, 12:20 amHuge caveat to this – some areas of law work very well, surprisingly well, considering the fallibility of humans. Constitutional law is NOT one of those areas, and 2nd amendment law has what is, IMO, the largest magnitude disconnect (principle and application are darn near opposite).
Lawyers are like the general population. Most of them are honest and hard working. Some of them are opportunists, some are parasites, some are sociopaths.
In my line, I’ve never, not one time, run into a “bad lawyer” in the sense of honest and fair. Even the adversaries are thoughtful and open-minded. But it’s a high stakes game, and rules can be used to advantage in unexpected ways that seem unfair (heck, that produce unfair outcomes); but that’s the nature of life in many things.
Anyway, I want to correct the impression I left, that the law sucks all around, many lawyers are scum, etc.
Elliot says:
So, what are the ranges at which rifles are used on a battlefield? Say, for example, during the Viet Nam war? Or Fallujah in Iraq?
July 5, 2010, 12:49 amTim Starr says:
Assault rifles are designed for engagements of 200 yards or less. Most hunting rifles are designed for longer-range shooting.
July 5, 2010, 1:39 amTim Starr says:
You claim to be impartial, but every source you cite is virulently anti-gun to the point of hydrophobia. The VPC? Total gun-banners, and long-proven liars. Their very own numbers prove that states w/ “weak” gun laws are safer, as detailed in a recent article published by Pajamas Media that you could find with trivial ease if you cared. The NEJM? Medical journals have zero expertise or credibility in criminology, period. Most of them got taken over by hoplophobes, and they published their anti-gun “studies” there after such agit-prop had been so thoroughly discredited in the criminological literature that it could no longer get published in any scholarly journal of criminology. Funny, you can’t seem to find anything to cite by Gary Kleck, John Lott, etc.
You’re either an ignorant dupe, or a lying hoplophic troll posing as a disinterested party.
July 5, 2010, 1:49 amTim Starr says:
Neither Epstein nor Posner are professional historians. Michael Bellesiles is a professional historian, and such a bad liar about guns that he got totally discredited for it – and not by the academic establishment, which lauded him to the skies so long as they could get away with it, but by academic outsiders. Meanwhile, those who discredited him, such as Clayton Cramer, affirm that the individual right to weapons for self-defense was originally meant to be protected by Amendment II.
Quibble all you like about the alleged ambiguity of the right to keep and bear arms as expressed in the Second Amendment to the Bill of Rights of the United States of America, but many of the states have their own equivalent to Amendment II, with wording that more clearly affirms that it protects an individual right. E.g.:
“1818 Connecticut: Every citizen has a right to bear arms in defense of himself and the state.”
July 5, 2010, 2:09 am– http://www.law.ucla.edu/volokh/beararms/statedat.htm
Bagbalm says:
This is a false argument. The safety in a Federal building is not in place to protect the general public. It is in place to protect those persons who do the business of the government. It is for the judges and clerks and bureaucrats who the government value more than the common people. Do not be speaking of protecting the public when there is no such intent. Indeed there is no legal basis to expect individual protection. The courts have repeatedly held such is too burdensome for the police. Something that is ignored in all these arguments about how we should depend on the police – that we can not legally depend on their response except by their whim.
July 5, 2010, 4:04 amSwede says:
I have an MBA.
I have it framed in one of those heavy, important looking wooden plaque frames.
I suppose if somebody was breaking into my home or threatening me/my family I could take it off the wall and hit them over the head with it.
But, really, it would be a lot safer and convenient for me to just shoot them with my SIG P229 40 Cal or my Glock 19 9mm.
Those frames are expensive.
July 5, 2010, 5:47 amHarvey Mosley says:
I’m too lazy to look it up right now, but I remember a study that showed that people with a CCW used their guns in a criminal manner less often than police officers. If this is true, shouldn’t individual police officers have to pay more to carry a gun than those with a CCW? Where I live in California (Stanislaus County) the cost for a CCW (if you can get one) including required training and fingerprinting, is about $300 every two years, and I have to buy the guns and ammo. Shouldn’t it be more for the police, whose guns and ammo are paid for by me and my fellow taxpayers? Again, assuming that I am remembering the study correctly, and it was accurate?
July 5, 2010, 6:13 amHarvey Mosley says:
Bleh,
July 5, 2010, 6:22 amit appears that you favor bans or heavy restrictions on AR15s and AK47s (please correct me if I’m wrong.) Would you place the same restrictions on a Ruger Ranch Rifle?
Butternut says:
It seems to me that the real question about the second amendment is whether as a society we are now too irresponsible to be trusted with guns. Were we at one time, as a culture, more mature and responsible than we are now? Or is it a sign of societal advancement that nations disarm themselves?
These questions are not being raised in places like Isreal or Switzerland where guns are in every home.
July 5, 2010, 6:23 amPat H. says:
There can be no tax upon the equipment required and used to exercise a right beyond a general sales tax which is the same for all other things sold. There probably ought to be a tax exemption for militia weapons and supplies for them.
The only legitimate restriction upon the ownership and possession of arms is the marketplace. If you can’t afford it you can’t own it. Fully automatic submachine guns are easier to make than semi-auto ones are, the materials for submachine guns can be obtained from any auto wrecking yard, old axle shafts make very good barrels, any reasonably competent machinist can make them.
And, please, let’s not go to the tiresome, hackneyed Red Herring of nuclear arms.
July 5, 2010, 8:38 amJim in Texas says:
Taxes/fees on the purchase or ownership of firearms is the same as making voter pay a poll tax and must be abolished.
July 5, 2010, 9:00 amcboldt says:
– The only legitimate restriction upon the ownership and possession of arms is the marketplace. –
July 5, 2010, 9:03 amI’d submit that public safety concerns may reasonably limit location and security parameters for some objects or concentrations of materials. For example, the storage of large quantities of explosive materials. The RKBA doesn’t protect a right to pack your house with TNT so you can blow up your neighborhood. I can also see laws that severely restrict possession and security of certain bioweapons, e.g., smallpox and anthrax virii.
But those debates seem to me to be an academic diversion (probably deliberate) to reduce the attention on permitting, registration, ammo tracing, right to bear (in general), and similar common harassments. As far as I know, there is no public clamor for the unrestricted right to own bazookas and hand grenades.
BambiB says:
2.5 million crimes prevented with firearms dwarfs any other consideration.
Since possession of guns is a net benefit to society, and I own guns, I’ll be looking for my checks from the government – one each from local, state and federal. Whatever is the average cost to society of a crime committed with a gun – triple it, and get those checks in the mail.
July 5, 2010, 9:17 amcboldt says:
– Or is it a sign of societal advancement that nations disarm themselves? –
July 5, 2010, 9:29 amArmed people do not voluntarily give up their arms. Arm stripping is always done with force, or the credible threat of force. Is it a sign of government advancement, that the people submit to being disarmed? Is it a sign of government benevolence?
Katahdin says:
‘Prescribed areas, set seasons, need landowner permission, no shooting near[1] dwellings, reasonable weapons, fees’ – if I am not mistaken, those accurately describe the typical state’s hunting laws for the last century or so. Without going into a several paragraph discussion, ballistic fingerprinting runs into the same practical problems that it does for urban law enforcement.
[1]It is usually something like ‘no shooting where you aren’t sure of the backstop, or within 500 feet of an occupied structure’. Expanding that to the maximum theoretical range of most rifles – a few miles- would close most of the country east of the Mississippi.
I drive past a serious wreck a couple of times a month, and see outrageously reckless behavior more often than that – someone cutting through freeway traffic, back and forth across the lanes, going 20 or 30 MPH faster than traffic. I am all for traffic laws, as long as they disproportionately impact the worst drivers. When they start having major impacts even on the law abiding (the trial balloon someone floated a few months ago, that every car in America have alcohol interlocks) then I get off the train.
July 5, 2010, 10:25 amKatahdin says:
@Bleh: if you want a non partisan discussion of anything to do with gun control, I would suggest anything by Gary Kleck. He will discuss both sides of any issue in great detail, the strengths and weaknesses of the various studies in great detail, and gives you the footnotes if you want to dig deeper or verify the sources.
July 5, 2010, 10:34 amGaunilo says:
Bagbalm I don’t disagree in any way that the security is to protect the insiders in a secure building. Protecting the public is just a side-effect. What I was pointing out is the impossibility of creating this same type of security even to the extent of eliminating only the gun threat in a larger environment without regulations that I would not want to live under.
I don’t know what type of happy bubble RonNYC lives in, but I have been visiting NYC sporadically for fifty years, and I can assure you I have seen several times that my happiness would have been more successfully pursued if I had had my Star PD safely tucked away somewhere on my person. I survived with no ill effects, but the fear sweat was not pleasant.
July 5, 2010, 11:09 ambrolin1911a1 says:
That viewpoint completely ignores the benefits to society when common gun ownership acts to reduce crime. Since 1972, numerous peer-reviewed studies have shown that firearms in the hands of the common, law-abiding citizens reduces crime by allowing intended victims to resist criminals. Ironically, most of the researchers such as Gary Kleck or John Lott were proponents of firearms restrictions who expected their research to prove exactly the opposite of what they ended up concluding. But to speak of the “costs” of gun ownership without also recognizing the benefits improperly skews the entire discussion.
I think that many RKBA supporters do, indeed, engage in such line drawing but I also think that they do so from a lack of historical perspective. Madison wrote of citizens possessed of arms “little if any inferior” to those issued to any standing army. During the War Between the States many units on both sides were equipped with artillery that was purchased by individual citizens and then donated to that unit. In US v Miller in 1939 the Supreme Court recognized that the militia, the common citizens not enrolled in the formal armed forces, was expected to turn out with their own privately owned martial arms and that arms suitable for such use were specifically protected under the 2nd Amendment. And finally, as recently as the nineteen-sixties, the mail-order sale of such things as surplus 75mm cannon, 20mm anti-tank rifles, and Japanese Nii mortars was taken for granted: I remember the ads and the only restriction was generally that one not be a resident of NYC.
So, to summarize, none of what are considered “common sense” restrictions today would have met the tests or viewpoints of the originators of the 2nd Amendment with regard to reasonable. The founders envisioned the government being limited and the citizenry being unlimited with regard to that right. And as a final comment on that point, I suggest considering the letter of marque and reprisal clause in the Constitution: such things would be impossible without the right of private citizens to own fully armed and equipped naval vessels.
July 5, 2010, 11:19 amGaunilo says:
To backstop of of Katahan’s points
[1]It is usually something like ‘no shooting where you aren’t sure of the backstop, or within 500 feet of an occupied structure’. Expanding that to the maximum theoretical range of most rifles — a few miles– would close most of the country east of the Mississippi.
Regulations that sound sensible to politicians and others with no dog in the fight can in actual effect make normal activities not only illegal, but felonious. I would like to point out that the Federal Safe Schools act, which prohibits the carrying of weapons that are not both unloaded and in a locked compartment makes it virtually impossible for a hunter to carry his lever action 30-30 in a soft case in the cab of his pickup on any conceivable journey to his hunting location without committing numerous felonies. The definition of a felonious act is now reduced to not following a packaging regulation exactly and simultaneously driving by a school three blocks away and completely out of sight of the newly created felon. And of course he has no possible way to know when he enters this exclusion zone. If he realized that he has entered one, turning around would not cure the problem under the statute. In most small towns this exclusion includes the entire area inside the city limits. But of course we don’t need to worry about this–the prosecutors are not going to enforce this against us, are they? Besides, its for the children.
July 5, 2010, 11:22 ambrolin1911a1 says:
As cboldt pointed out, those more knowledgeable about firearms refer to the 1994 Feinstein-Schumer ban as “The Ugly Gun Ban.” Sen. Feinstein admitted at the time the law was passed that the list of banned firearms was not derived from any law enforcement list of guns commonly used in crimes. Rather, she admitted, she and Sen. Ben Nighthorse-Campbell had gone through a copy of Gun Digest and listed those guns which they agreed looked particularly dangerous or scary to them. Since there is no objective definition of the term “assault weapon,” (a baseball bat is an assault weapon if used to threaten or attack someone) the only criteria that can be used is cosmetic.
@BLEH, If I seem to be be picking on your views. I’m not. It’s just that you seem to typify the viewpoint of the average, non-gun owning citizen whose knowledge of the issue is mainly derived from MSM news reports and/or entertainment media depictions.
July 5, 2010, 11:36 ambrolin1911a1 says:
You are absolutely correct. When Missouri first passed its “shall issue” CCW law in 2003 and it was ruled Constitutional in 2004, sheriffs had to justify any fees charged. This was due to a since-resolved conflict with the state’s Hancock Amendment on fees and taxes. My sheriff did such an audit and determined that the actual cost of doing the required background check–instant MULES check at time of application, fingerprints taken and sent to the MSHP and then the FBI, and final issuance paperwork–was only $16 plus the $38 charged by the MSHP for the fingerprint check. Since he was already doing such background checks for free as a regular service of the office for school teachers, postal workers, pharmacy techs, and others requiring background checks he decided to charge nothing more than the State fee of $38. Those localities who claim it costs more are blowing smoke up their citizens’ nether regions.
July 5, 2010, 11:50 ambrolin1911a1 says:
A commonly accepted fallacy. The only reason registration is ever needed is if there is a goal of eventual confiscation and general disarmament. The first such laws in the USA were laws intended to disarm Blacks. The first such registration laws in Great Britain, the 1920 Firearms Act, was enacted to prevent disaffected working class from engaging in a possible Bolshevik-style revolt. Similarly, the Weimar Republic’s 1928 gun registration law was also enacted in the midst of civil strife and calls for a socialist revolution. Our own National Firearms Act of 1934 was also passed post-Prohibition but in the midst of the Great Depression and labor uprisings.
Registration has never been shown to reduce crime. Registration has never solved a crime. At most registration may have been used occasionally to help convict once the crime has been solved and the criminal already arrested. This in spite of the fact that crime control, not general population control, has always been the publicly proclaimed goal of those who push registration schemes on the public.
July 5, 2010, 12:01 pmLorenzo says:
i think scalia’s decision was incorrectly focused on self-defense. the right to self-defense seems to be something scalia found in the shadows and penumbras of the constitution.
also the right to keep and bear arms based on a right to self defense seems to open a door to some future govt effort to limit the right to just a right to bear small arms. federal and state and local govts could “reasonably regulate” the kinds of weapons that we can own to ridiculously small arms that would still keep us vulnerable to well-armed outlaws and govt agents.
i think the right to keep and bear arms, linked to citizen militias, should mean that citizens have the right to keep and bear weapons that are on a par with the sorts of weapons typically deployed, for example, by a squad or platoon of foot soldiers on patrol. if citizen militias have any credible constitutional meaning, then the govt cannot limit them to the kinds of weapons that would render them ineffective against a tyranical or authoritarian govt.
July 5, 2010, 12:08 pmAllan Walstad says:
Another collectivist demanding that anything good be coercively subsidized.
July 5, 2010, 12:12 pmbrolin1911a1 says:
One wonders what is meant by “whacky” theories. It would be hard to exceed the conclusion of the 1982 Senate Committee of the Judiciary’s subcommittee on the Constitution in its report: “The conclusion is thus inescapable that the history, concept, and wording of the second amendment to the Constitution of the United States, as well as its interpretation by every major commentator and court in the first half-century after its ratification, indicates that what is protected is an individual right of a private citizen to own and carry firearms in a peaceful manner.”
While taken out of print by the George H. Bush administration immediately prior to Pres. Bush’s executive order banning the importation of military-style semi-auto rifles, the entire Senate report can be found online at numerous locations. One such is http://www.guncite.com/journals/senrpt/senrpt.html . Reading it will help to alleviate fears of “whacky” theories of self-defense.
July 5, 2010, 12:15 pmbrolin1911a1 says:
Yes, her MBA worked so well for protecting that poor stockbroker who was raped, beaten, and left for dead in New York’s Central Park by “wilding” youths a few years back. I think my daughter’s legally carried Kel-Tec P11 9mm will offer much more protection than her college degree should she ever, God forbid, find herself in similar circumstances.
That does, however, lead to the suggestion that BLEH made, i.e., imagine a world with no guns. Okay. What would result is a world where the strong rule the weak, where organized gangs ambush and victimize solitary victims. It would be a return to a culture where physically powerful bullies and their sycophants lorded it over weaker or less skilled peasants.
Today, my middle-aged 100# wife or my college-aged 105# daughter can be the equal of any 300# sociopath thanks to the fact that they can legally carry an equalizing tool, their concealed handguns. Although I’m also middle-aged and becoming arthritic, I also have the ability to defend myself against young, physically fit, predatory thugs for the same reason. In a world without guns, that would not be true.
July 5, 2010, 12:31 pmLarryA says:
How about drivers licenses? Think green folks.
“Sorry. We don’t think you need private transportation. You should depend on the state-run public transportation system. We’re even planning this nifty new bullet train that will pick you up within a half-hour of your needing a ride. But if it doesn’t show up we can’t be held responsible for your missed appointment.
“Who’s that we just gave a license to? That’s the mayor’s brother-in-law.”
Last time I ran basic infantry training with an M-16 recruits had to ding targets out to 400m. When I qualified with the M-14 it was 500m. Note that was back in the 1970s, and lots of firearm companies have made lots of improvements since then.
If “assault weapons” are no more useful than shotguns and pistols, why do so many street cops keep an AR handy?
Depends on the game. You won’t take rabbits and squirrels at 200 yards. Depending on terrain 100-200 yards is pretty good for deer. With Pronghorn you’d be lucky to get a 300 yard shot.
OTOH, if you’re looking for feral hog, an AR is exactly what you need.
Absolutely. It generally happens right before the government blue screen of death shows up and society has to reboot.
July 5, 2010, 12:39 pmbrolin1911a1 says:
For years, it was possible to visit the http://webapp.cdc.gov/sasweb/ncipc/mortrate.html website of the Center for Disease control and do a customized search based upon cause of death, ethnic/racial group, and age parameters. For the last decade, the number of accidental shootings of children under the age of 15 was in the low dozens. Now, that page has been removed by the current administration and replaced with pre-massaged PDF files that do not allow such a customized search. But even so, accidental firearms deaths are so rare that they do not even show up on the new, non-customizable charts at http://www.cdc.gov/injury/wisqars/fatal.html.
Those who would ban or restrict firearms and claim large number of “youths” killed with firearms each year have always included victims as old as 25 years of age in order to reach their inflated numbers. This leads directly to the question I found myself asking when I first began looking into this issue while in college in the early eighties. That question is, “If those proposing strict firearms regulation really have the welfare of society as a goal, why do they feel it necessary to exaggerate or fabricate their `facts’ to justify those regulation efforts?”
July 5, 2010, 1:02 pmJim Kilpatrick says:
Guess I’ll try again as my first attempt at posting doesn’t seem to have worked:
@Bleh: The people should be able to obtain, keep and use any and all weapons which would be useful in defending their life, the lives of others, their homes AND their COMMUNITIES. That means any and all weapons, including those of military utility, that a military might use for such purposes/missions. That would include everything from the basic military type “assault rifle” up to selp-propelled cannons and tanks. Pure economic reality would limit the number of INDIVIDUALS that could acquire, maintain and operate such “heavy” weapons as SP Cannons and Tanks but “groups” of individuals, say the local militia, could come together and share those costs. I know that’s not what the progressive statist want to hear but too bad for them.
July 5, 2010, 1:18 pmRegardless of how libs, progressives/communists and other sheep may try to pervert the issue, an individual’s right to self-defense does NOT stop at their front door nor their front gate. All humans in the universe have the fundamental birthright to defend their gift of life anytime, anywhere it is threatened — at the grocery store, the local grade school, the county treasurer’s office, New York City, Chicago, San Francisco, the empty plains of Wyoming, the convoluted streets of Hong Kong, the capital of China, etc. The fact that totalitarian regimes around the World do not recognize or allow the exercise of the right has no bearing on whether it exists or not. It just has a practical effect of not ‘allowing’ it. Thankfully, America’s founders and framers of the U.S. Constitution recognized and acknowledged it and encapsulated it in the BoRs as the 2nd Amendment and explained and defined its scope in their historical writings and debates.
Every human being in the World has the same fundamental rights but it is up to the people themselves to assert, fight for and defend those rights. Luckily, here in America, we have been informed of our rights and conditioned to defend them with our lives, fortunes and sacred honor. We will do just that! Of course, there is approx. 20% of the population that have been infected by the desease of progressivism/communism/socialism/facism etc. and we may be facing a mandate in the coming months or years to cut that desease from the heart of America. Sad but, I fear, true and necessary. May God give us the wisdom, courage and resolve to do that which we must to preserve liberty and justice for our posterity.
Pappadave says:
Of course we have an “answer” for what constitutes an “assault weapon.” It’s “Any shoulder-fired rifle that has a selector switch allowing it to be capable of fully-automatic fire, with a magazine allowing one to carry, ready to fire, more than 8 rounds of ammunition pre-loaded.” Period. Almost NONE of the so-called “assault weapons” that were the subject of the former “ban” met these criteria. They were called “assault weapons” by the ignorant because they LOOKED like military weapons, had a shoulder stock and a pistol grip, a flash suppresor and a bayonet lug and a large-capacity magazine.
July 5, 2010, 1:24 pmcboldt says:
– “If those proposing strict firearms regulation really have the welfare of society as a goal, why do they feel it necessary to exaggerate or fabricate their ‘facts’ to justify those regulation efforts?” –
July 5, 2010, 1:40 pmThat’s a desire to control artifact. In some cases, combined with a pollyanna outlook (reality-impaired), in other cases combined with a polpot outlook.
Allan Walstad says:
Pappadave: You are referring to “assault rifle.” Not “assault weapon,” which is a meaningless term cooked up by anti-gun propagandists.
July 5, 2010, 1:49 pmjuris imprudent says:
2.5 million crimes prevented with firearms dwarfs any other consideration.
Bambi, that is a number developed via a polling technique, and it tends to be the upper end of the estimate range. Note that the low end (using a different method) which is acknowledged to undercount such incidents, is still over 100,000 defensive gun uses a year. With that big of a range, you can’t definitively say how many actually happen.
July 5, 2010, 2:10 pmwtfo says:
More guns in the hands of law abiding citizens = less crime.
This is not even debatable at this point. I even hear it from law enforcement, who know they cannot be everywhere at once. Some people need to get out more and see how others live – both good, and bad.
July 5, 2010, 2:19 pmRonNYC says:
Two points: One is (2nd Amendment arguments aside), gun laws don’t work perhaps because they aren’t applied uniformly. If I can easily buy a gun in South Carolina, this basically defeats a strong gun law in New York as I can easily smuggle one in. If gun were uniformly prohibited and gun manufacture and importation were prohibited, I’ll bet guns laws would work rather well. (Guns are harder to secretly import than, say, drugs or money.)
But the second point, the one I quoted here, really galls me. Why is the safety of a judge in some courtroom more important than that of my child who has to walk through a gang area on the way to school? If guns are so wonderful, why exclude them from public buildings and schools? It’s inconsistent.
July 5, 2010, 2:23 pmBleh says:
Well. First I did look. All of the sites I could find in a quick google search that supported that view contained no actual data – just a parroting of the same claim over and over. Which is why I asked for actual data. notaclue and a few others were nice enough to point me to some sites (which I’ve been taking a look at), some of them were even kind enough to do it without insulting me. =)
Honestly, I don’t support regulations on any specific weapons (with the exception perhaps of full-auto weapons and explosives). Even when I first listed “assault weapons” as the type of weapons that may be appropriate for regulation I said that there would likely be some weapons in that classification that would be appropriate for regulation and some that would not.
I don’t claim to be a weapon expert — I don’t claim to be any kind of expert. However, that does not mean that I don’t know enough about guns to form the opinion that there are some out there that should be regulated. I would hope (foolishly, perhaps, in the opinion of most people here) that the legislature would rely on experts in putting together regulations on certain weapons, and that the courts would rely on experts in deciding if those regulations are over inclusive.
I have met very few people (at most two) in my life who were so libertarian as to believe that private parties should be allowed to own nuclear weapons. I’m taking a guess here, but I suspect that most of the people on this thread would support regulations on the purchase of nuclear weapons (in fact, most would probably ban private parties and even some governments from owning them). If that’s true then this is all just a matter of line drawing. As I asked before, I’d like to see where other RTKBA advocates lines are.
[snark] I draw my line closer to what the founders considered to be an arm – I guess that makes me an originalist in this case. [/snark]
July 5, 2010, 2:36 pmcboldt says:
– Every human being in the World has the same fundamental rights but it is up to the people themselves to assert, fight for and defend those rights. Luckily, here in America, we have been informed of our rights and conditioned to defend them … –
July 5, 2010, 2:41 pmLuckily, here in America, for much of our history (and for the first time in recorded history), the cheap talk as to the right to keep and bear arms was (past tense) faithfully implemented as a matter of government policy.
But there is more than one way to skin a cat. The gun grabbers have been successful in diluting the fundamental rights of the individual in many ways, and continue to work on many fronts, including the fronts of “informing” and “conditioning.”
Bleh says:
I appreciate that. I haven’t felt that you were picking on me so far, just debating the issue.
If that is true, then I would agree that that is a completely improper method of crafting regulations and the courts should overturn such regulations.
July 5, 2010, 2:43 pmcboldt says:
– If guns are so wonderful, why exclude them from public buildings and schools? –
July 5, 2010, 2:49 pmGuns aren’t excluded from public buildings and schools. There are armed disarmers at the gate.
Bias the gun laws toward permitting the law abiding to shoot back at the gangs in self defense.
If your safety is so important, why do you tolerate being disarmed by the government?
Bleh says:
Something like your first definition is what I had in mind when I used the term “assault weapon” (I could care less about looks, I only care about what the weapon actually does). Some may say that that definition is over inclusive or under inclusive (or over in some respects and under in others), that’s fine — there’s room for debate there — I just want to be clear that I didn’t mean that any weapon that looks like an “assault weapon” was actually an “assault weapon”. Thanks for the clarification.
Thank you, the videos (especially the first two) were very informative. I agree that our definitions should be tightened up when we pass regulations.
Always good to call anyone who has a different point of view from you a communist.
July 5, 2010, 2:55 pmRichard Allen Pierce says:
Bleh:
To answer your question we can turn to our founding fathers:
Tench Coxe wrote in defense of the proposed Constitution, in the Pennsylvania Gazette of Feb. 20, 1788: “Their swords, and every other terrible instrument of the soldier, are the birth right of an American. The unlimited power of the sword is not in the hands of either the federal or the state governments, but, where I trust in God it will ever remain, in the hands of the people.”
Thus whatever weapon is issued to a modern day soldier is what every American can own. What ever happened to the trust between citizens and neighbors? Guess I grew up in a different time and place. I don’t think twice about seeing a fellow citizen walking down the street with a firearm. In Junior College I had the luck of taking a firearms class that put us through the police course. As part of it we were allowed to shoot one of the County’s Thompson Automatic’s. Back then it cost me $6 for a full box of 50 rounds for it (we had to buy our own ammo). Took me less than 15 seconds to empty the magazine. Even today it is normal to see several people walking around campus with a firearm and no one thinks twice about it. Just happens that Lassen Community College is one of the premier gunsmithing schools in the county. Perception and familiarity plays a big part of gun debate.
July 5, 2010, 2:55 pmDennis N says:
To pick nits, there is only one “Assault Rifle,” WW-II German Sturmgewehr 44. Modern so-called assault rifles mirror its characteristics; a short rifle, capable of semi automatic and full automatic (machinegun) fire, and firing a short cartridge with reduced power compared to the prevailing military battle rifle calibres. The two most common “assault rifle” cartridges today, are the 5.56mm NATO cartridge (AKA 5.56 x 45mm, or .223) fired by the M16 and M4 family, and the 7.62 x 39mm cartridge fired by the AK47 family.
Civilian look alikes, while maintaining some of the desirable features of their military forebears, lack the ability to fire fully automatic, and are functionally indistinguishable from most semi automatic sporting rifles.
The weapons are, in fact, finely suited to hunting some types of game. The M16 is a credible varmint rifle, suitable for prairie dogs and groundhogs, and game up to about the size of coyotes. The 5.56mm cartridge is generally considered inhumane for deer and is banned for that use in many states. However, conversions are readily available to other calibres suitable for much of North America’s small and large critters. Available calibres range from .22LR to .50 Beowolf, with just about everything imaginable in between.
The AK47 is not a bad whitetail deer or pig rifle, being compact in size and firing a cartridge not much different from the venerable .30-30. It is a bit heavy for my taste, and I prefer the older SKS, but that’s a matter of preference.
The possession of large capacity magazines is generally prohibited by state game laws while hunting game animals, but that’s no problem. Small magazines are readily available for that purpose.
For self defense, so-called assault weapons are often ideal. The example of defense against rioters and mobs has already been cited. Perhaps more commonly important, is the ease of moving about with a large capacity magazine in place, thereby taking a supply of ammunition with you. Arguably a Citizen has more of a need for a portable supply of firepower than has a cop. He has a radio and backup available; the Citizen doesn’t necessarily have that. The cop arrives already tricked out for battle, with extra magazines and stuff on his gunbelt. The Citizen is more likely to have to respond with what he can pick up and move with.
July 5, 2010, 2:58 pmbrolin1911a1 says:
And, the ultimate catch-22 here is that the State of Illinois has no mechanism, no procedures, for certifying instructors because there is no State law requiring such certification other than for police officers. So the only instructors who could give the training under the Chicago ordinance are police instructors and it is very, very doubtful that their departments will allow them to instruct non-politically connected non-Law Enforcement students.
July 5, 2010, 3:05 pmcboldt says:
– If that is true, then I would agree that that is a completely improper method of crafting regulations and the courts should overturn such regulations. –
July 5, 2010, 3:12 pmThe complete record is available for your review.
I’m wondering what your attitude will be if/when you find out the Courts did, and do uphold irrational regulations. See Heller II, upholding a ban on 11 round magazines but permitting 10 round magazines, for example.
Katahdin says:
I’ll bite – why? Can’t the smuggler just hide them under the drugs?
I think you probably also underestimate the difficulty of clandestine manufacture. You don’t need a big factory anymore; with modern CNC machinery a crooked machine shop operator can come in on a weekend, load the right file of machine instructions from a thumb drive, and crank out a few to trade for drugs. You don’t need a pharmaceutical factory to make meth, you don’t need a tractor to grow marijuana, and you don’t need that much of a machine shop to make crude (or for that matter, sophisticated) guns.
July 5, 2010, 3:14 pmDennis N says:
@bleh:
You talk about drawing lines, and most law involves the drawing of lines, from where we can walk our dogs, to who we can kill and who we can’t.
A credible line can be drawn at individual weapons, those commonly carried and served by an individual. In that respect battleships, machineguns and artillery would be out, but fully automatic rifles and submachineguns would be in.
That having been said, private ownership of machineguns was unregulated until the National Firearms Act of 1934 (?) and I’m not aware of any significant crimes committed with belt fed machineguns. Since the NFA, I believe there have been two documented crimes committed with legally owned machineguns, including those stolen from their owners. One was a hit committed by a cop, and the other was a couple of kids shooting up the countryside with a stolen tommy gun, IIRC.
Artillery was unregulated until the Gun Control Act of 1964, and I am unaware of any crimes at all committed with artillery, at least since the Indian wars.
I’m not going to hold my breath for machinegun or artillery ownership to be eased, and I don’t expect to see any public outcry to have it eased, but it hasn’t seemed to have done any good.
July 5, 2010, 3:17 pmBleh says:
Thanks for the answer. I can definitely understand your position, and appreciate the quote as helping to clarify the way some of the participants of the Constitutional Convention viewed the RTKBA. From my perspective, I’m still somewhat hesitant to guess at what the founding fathers would have thought of grenades, land mines, tanks, drones, and even automatic weapons.
The founders lived in a time when someone with a weapon could kill or injure one, or maybe two people at a time, so I wonder what they would think of weapons designed to quickly kill whole crowds of people.
What I could see (and I’m not saying I do, but this argument seems at least somewhat reasonable to me) is a right to store certain types of advanced weapons (within limits) in the home as a member of the militia (and to transport those weapons to shooting ranges, in a locked box or some other type of proper transportation storage, in order to train in the use of the weapon). And perhaps stocks of certain other weapons at “militia centers”. That of course begs the question of what is the militia (all people, national guard, something different?).
But I am not convinced that the RTKBA includes the right to walk down the street with an automatic weapon. I’m on the fence as to whether it includes the right to walk down the street with any type of weapon, honestly.
July 5, 2010, 3:26 pmbrolin1911a1 says:
I assure you that even sixteen years later I still remember that admission. Wayne LaPierre and I seem to disagree upon who the second party was. As I remember it, Sen. Ben Nighthorse-Campbell, an NRA A-rated Senator opposed to the ban sat down with Sen. Feinstein and worked out a compromise, going through the Gun Digest and picking the guns to be banned. As the NRA’s Wayne LaPierre recalls in this 2004 article, http://clintongunban.com/Articles.aspx?i=137&a=Articles it was Sen. Schumer who did that with her. While it may be debatable who the second Senator was there is no question about how the list of guns was formulated.
I don’t have time to do any more research on it now. There’s a “meet and greet” at a newly opened firearms range (grand opening this weekend) in Springfield, MO in 2 hours that I’d like to attend and that’s a 100 mile drive from here. But while searching I did stumble across this article by David Kopel, “Rational Analysis of Assault Weapon Prohibition” which you may find it worthwhile to bookmark and peruse at your leisure. You’ll find it quite informative. http://davekopel.com/2a/lawrev/rational.htm
July 5, 2010, 3:36 pmcboldt says:
– The founders lived in a time when someone with a weapon could kill or injure one, or maybe two people at a time, so I wonder what they would think of weapons designed to quickly kill whole crowds of people. –
July 5, 2010, 3:37 pmThe founders knew cannon and grapeshot, and they thought it was a formidable power.
– I am not convinced that the RTKBA includes the … the right to walk down the street with any type of weapon, honestly. –
So, “and bear” means what?
Do you find no moral issue with compelling the weak to forgo a weapon, to hold off thugs? Or do you just want to pick and choose which individuals you will grant power to, on your behalf?
Bleh says:
Just to clarify before someone calls me an idiot. I do not think that Tench Coxe was a delegate to the Philadelphia Convention… Still, I’m pretty sure that some of the delegates did share his view.
July 5, 2010, 3:40 pmArthur Kirkland says:
Preparing for a fight against libs/progressives/communists/socialists/fascists, Jim?
I take heart from my expectation that guys like you will lose every time, because you rely on a god that doesn’t exist, so that god will always let you down at crunch time.
That “my god is bigger and badder than your god” crap never works, unless you consider reason and knowledge to be gods.
July 5, 2010, 3:45 pmKatahdin says:
While I’m recommending books, you might like – ‘Shots in the Dark’ by Vizzard. He is a career ATF agent, and in favor of quite stringent regulation overall. He does make a point that is too often missed: in general, it makes sense to talk about who may or may not own weapons. Once you let someone own a given weapon, it no longer makes much sense to add other restrictions. Either the person is a good guy, and the restrictions are unneeded, or he’s a bad guy and will ignore the restrictions. Your statement about the locked box on the way to the range is an example – if someone can be trusted with an M-16 (which is what I think you are saying), worrying about whether he carries it in the trunk or cab or the truck, in a hard or soft case, with the ammo in or not in a separate locked case and so on is missing the point; if he can’t be trusted going to the range with the M-16 in a soft case, he can’t be trusted to do so in a hard case either.
That kind of nickle and dime restriction tends to maximize the irritation to the law abiding, while having minimal effect on the crooks.
July 5, 2010, 3:46 pmDennis N says:
They also recognized the right to privately own warships, and cover the issuance of Letters of Marque and Reprisal to such privately owned vessels in the Constitution. These were weapons of more destructive power than the so-called assault rifles and machineguns discussed today.
Privately owned artillery was unregulated until 1964.
July 5, 2010, 3:48 pmcboldt says:
– I take heart from my expectation that guys like you will lose every time, because you [have a gun and I am so superior that I don't need one] –
July 5, 2010, 3:53 pm– That “my god is bigger and badder than your god” crap never works, unless you consider reason and knowledge to be gods. –
Agreed. On earth, the only thing that works, reliably, is superior firepower. Reason and knowledge melt in the face of death and destruction. The government is requesting a monopoly on the death and destruction part of the equation. You go first.
juris imprudent says:
bleh sez If that is true, then I would agree that that is a completely improper method of crafting regulations and the courts should overturn such regulations.
Perhaps if the rational basis test actually did require a rational basis. As the test is applied, the presumption is that the legislative branch actually knows what it is doing absent overwhelming evidence to the contrary. And even then, if the policy doesn’t offend the judge, he will find for the govt.
July 5, 2010, 4:11 pmBleh says:
Very good point. I kinda wonder what the founders would have thought if just about any pleb out there could get their hands on a cannon though… Especially if something as powerful as a cannon could be carried in one hand, easily primed, and you could casually walk down the street with it.
Good question. Bear obviously means to carry or hold. I’m not sure that it can be read to mean “carry and hold in all circumstances and at all times” though. It might be interesting to know if people could carry loaded weapons into early meetings of the Continental Congress, or if there were any types of weapon related restrictions commonly imposed in the US or UK around the time of the Convention that might have informed what the founders were thinking. I would also ask why the 2nd amendment mentions a “well regulated militia” if any regulations were outside of the founders understanding/acceptance.
I don’t think that’s fair. Any thug who uses force against another individual should be charged with the appropriate crime. Do you support the right to use your weapon to “defend yourself” against anyone who looks at you in what you interpret to be a threatening manner? There are obviously problems with both approaches (regulation vs. no/lax regulation), my personal opinion is that while, unfortunately, gun regulations may lead to more muggings (and granted some innocent deaths that wouldn’t have occurred without gun regulation) they may also decrease the number of shooting deaths (especially of innocent bystanders). It’s all just a balancing act, if you have a perfect solution, I’m willing to hear it out.
July 5, 2010, 4:11 pmcboldt says:
– if you have a perfect solution, I’m willing to hear it out. –
July 5, 2010, 4:16 pmI think that sums up your “open mindedness” quite well.
Bleh says:
I agree, there should be (at least a little) more bite to the rational basis test.
July 5, 2010, 4:18 pmXenocles says:
Then there’s the UK, which effectively bans firearms and has the added benefit of being an island. Even with those two things going for arms control criminals still seem to have little trouble arming themselves.
July 5, 2010, 4:19 pmPappadave says:
Then again, when did we reach the point when a woman, lying raped and murdered in an alley, is somehow considered to be morally superior to a second woman, standing in the entrance to that same alley, explaining to the police how that rapist got a hole in the middle of his chest? I certainly know which one of the two I’d prefer my wife or daughters to be. The whole concept of “gun control” is, on its face, unconstitutional…IF we had always had a Supreme Court that had read and understood all of our founding documents. Quite obviously, based on MacDonald we have four USSC Justices who have not done either…or they’ve chosen to place their own biases ahead of the basic law of the land, which seems more likely. That old “evolving document” nonsense is just that. The Founders knew that changes would be required as history progressed and gave us a mechanism for such changes called “Amendments.” The “progressives” know and understand that they have zero chance of getting such Amendments passed so have chosen instead to install “Judges” on the federal bench who’ll be willing to subsitute his/her judgement for the plain intent of the Founders. Such judges SHOULD be impeached, but won’t because of political expediency.
July 5, 2010, 4:19 pmBleh says:
LOL. K thx.
July 5, 2010, 4:19 pmjuris imprudent says:
Especially if something as powerful as a cannon could be carried in one hand, easily primed, and you could casually walk down the street with it.
Then it wouldn’t be a “cannon”, would it?
I’ve always advocated the simple “bang vs boom” test. If it goes “bang” it is probably a protected arm, if it goes “boom” it is probably ordnance (i.e. not an arm) and not protected.
By the by, I’ve never come across a statute that forbids a person from owning a nuclear weapon. I think the closest relevant law comes from control of traffic of nuclear material. Or perhaps the declarations of certain locales that are “nuclear free zones”.
July 5, 2010, 4:27 pmcboldt says:
– I kinda wonder what the founders would have thought if just about any pleb out there could get their hands on a cannon though… Especially if something as powerful as a cannon could be carried in one hand, easily primed, and you could casually walk down the street with it. –
July 5, 2010, 4:27 pmWhat sort of nonsense is that? Are you planning to enact laws that circumvent physics? They thought about man against man the same way you and think about man against man. Duh.
– It might be interesting to know if people could carry loaded weapons into early meetings of the Continental Congress .. –
Yeah. Maybe you could look that up. I know, but I’m not talkin’.
– I would also ask why the 2nd amendment mentions a “well regulated militia” if any regulations were outside of the founders understanding/acceptance. –
That’s a good question you ask yourself. The general meaning is that neighbors would cooperate and practice cooperation in military arts.
– Any thug who uses force against another individual should be charged with the appropriate crime. –
And the weak person who was beat up or killed to accommodate your vision is shit out of luck.
– Do you support the right to use your weapon to “defend yourself” against anyone who looks at you in what you interpret to be a threatening manner? –
No. I support the right of the innocent to use as much force as they can marshal to protect their own life. They in fact have a right to defend themselves. “Screw you and the horse you rode in on,” I’m not waiting for permission to fight back.
– It’s all just a balancing act …–
As an invalid weakling, I reject your sense of where to set the balance.
Bleh says:
There were 55 delegates at the Constitutional Convention, many of whom had very different views on a wide variety of subjects. The Constitution then went on to be ratified by 14 states in separate, hotly debated, conventions. As such I find that phrase very hard to agree with.
This is of course an extreme example, but: what if a Convention were called to rewrite the Constitution. Every major political blog could elect two representatives from among their posters and commenters. Do you think the resulting document would carry with it a plain intent, or would it be subject to a great deal of interpretation? The intent of the drafters (at least the ones who clarified what their intent was) can help in the interpretation (unless two drafters say two different things, I suppose) but I don’t think it can be the bottom line.
July 5, 2010, 4:30 pmHerbM says:
Even the Texas CHL (on the order of $100) and the fee for the class which roughly doubles the cost of the license are much greater than the equivalent TX driver’s license putting the lie to “reasonable cost” — especially when you consider the PICTURE, PRINTING, and any TESTING FEES are part of the driver’s license and extra cost for the CHL.
Even the labor intensive “initial road test” is included in the drivers license.
It is also unreasonable when compared to states such as New Hampshire and Pennsylvania (about $20).
Or why is there any cost when Alaska and Vermont prove there is no need?
July 5, 2010, 4:30 pmPappadave says:
Bleh says:
Actually they DID carry weapons at those meetings. In fact, there was a rifle rack at the back of the main assembly where they could be stored. FDR had that rack removed from Constitution Hall during his Presidency so as to “…not give the public the wrong idea about the founders.” By the way, the term “well-regulated” as used in the 2nd Amendment didn’t mean the same thing it does today. In the late 18th Century, “to regulate” simply meant “to make regular…or even.” It did NOT mean to place tens of thousands of unnecessary “regulations” on the ownership of a simple firearm.
July 5, 2010, 4:33 pmcboldt says:
Me: Or do you just want to pick and choose which individuals you will grant power to, on your behalf?
July 5, 2010, 4:41 pmBleh: I don’t think that’s fair. … [then goes on to pick and choose, "balancing act", etc.]
You are a punk bully, relying on the power of a faceless government to impose your will, on those who mean you no harm, and to impose a will that weakens personal independence.
You might fool many people with your “but it’s for your own good” baloney. You don’t think the people have a right to keep and bear arms? Fine, set an example through your personal actions.
Pappadave says:
We KNOW the Founder’s plain intent from their own writings…especially the Federalist Papers (which are available at most any decent book store…I have a leather-bound copy myself, bought from the Easton Press.) Pick up a copy and read them thoroughly. You’ll be amazed to see how much will be revealed to you.
July 5, 2010, 4:53 pmBleh says:
Nice chatting with you too.
July 5, 2010, 4:54 pmBleh says:
The Federalists Papers do indeed give us an idea of the intent of at least three of the 55 members of the Constitutional Convention. Almost a majority, but not quite.
July 5, 2010, 5:08 pmBleh says:
Anyhow folks, nice chatting with you, but I have a habit of disengaging from debates when people start questioning my motives, my intelligence, my inclination towards thuggishness, and (in the case of one commenter) my breeding (?!?).
Some of the commenters here have provided valuable information which I plan to review more thoroughly, as time permits. Some other commenters have been… interesting.
Cheers.
July 5, 2010, 5:12 pmcboldt says:
– Nice chatting with you too. –
July 5, 2010, 5:23 pmThat’s a pusilanimous response.
cboldt says:
– … valuable information which I plan to review more thoroughly, as time permits. –
July 5, 2010, 5:26 pmROTFL. Your arguments suck pond water, too.
jack burton says:
1) Out side of the Oklahoma City bombing and 9/11 the next largest mass murder in our country was done with a one dollar can of gasoline in the hands of a disgruntled boyfriend. He very casually walked down the streets with it and killed almost a hundred people.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Happy_Land_fire
2) “well regulated militia” doesn’t mean what you think it means. The same a as a clock that kept time was ““well regulated” a milita was supposed to function properly. The phrase had nothing to do with government control of the members.
3) Awful cavalier about those who get dead at the end of the day when the social deviant gets thru with his work, eh. You’ll be very hard pressed to find many “innocents” who have been hurt by the CCW community while protecting themselves. If there were, don’t you think that Brady and the VPC would feature those as headlines on every website they have up. But they don’t. That should tell you something.
July 5, 2010, 5:39 pmBleh says:
If you doubt my sincerity, that’s your choice.
But, I wasn’t really talking to you. I was talking to the people who actually provided data to back up their arguments (or who provided logical arguments in general), not those (such as yourself) who believe that ad hominems are valid points in and of themselves.
July 5, 2010, 5:55 pmcboldt says:
– I was talking to the people who actually provided data to back up their arguments (or who provided logical arguments in general), not those (such as yourself) who believe that ad hominems are valid points in and of themselves. –
You didn’t avail yourself of the resources I provided for your benefit (e.g., links to 1808 debates in Congress, with hand transcribed excerpts). You didn’t address my early remarks that the AWB was based on appearance rather than performance, etc. From my point of view, you blew past my input, or provided nonsense rebuttals (e.g., would I support shoot somebody for looking threatening, rather than being threatening).
I’ll grant that my online manner can be mean spirited and gruff, but winning argument depends more on the substance than the tenor. I don’t lose just because I’m acting like a jerk.
The substance of your rebuttals has been falsehood or misconception. Plus, you don’t mind disarming weak invalids, “in the balance.”
July 5, 2010, 6:13 pmD.T. says:
I’ve wondered for a while. How does Chicago(or any state or city) plan to regulate or tax travelers through its jursidiction–citizens have exactly the same rights as residents to self-protection? Or do they think that every citizen should prepare beforehand for every approval, fee, waiting period, etc., in every jurisdiction in which happenstance might take them?
D.T.
July 5, 2010, 6:15 pmArthur Kirkland says:
blockquote cite=”comment-870895″>
Pappadave: We KNOW the Founder’s plain intent from their own writings…especially the Federalist Papers (which are available at most any decent book store…I have a leather-bound copy myself, bought from the Easton Press.) Pick up a copy and read them thoroughly. You’ll be amazed to see how much will be revealed to you.
I recommend you aim extreme skepticism at anything else learned from the people who explained this to you.
July 5, 2010, 6:24 pmAllan Walstad says:
RonNYC
Access to the courtroom can be tightly controlled, metal detectors used, armed police officers present, etc. It’s not that the judge’s life is more valuable (or at least, that wouldn’t be my reasoning). As for schools, the legal (but not de facto) exclusion of firearms has made them safe zones for criminals and cost quite a few innocent people, including many children, their lives.
July 5, 2010, 6:29 pmBleh says:
Just because I haven’t had time to read them yet, doesn’t mean I won’t — even though I think you’re an asshole — it just means that I’ve been too busy to read and absorb all of it during the last two days (most of the posts I’ve made have been from my phone). I have indeed looked at the things I’ve been able too (such as the automatic weapon related youtube videos that were posted — which I found informative), and plan to review the rest when I have more free time.
I don’t think I’ve made very many arguments in which I claimed to be an expert. If you’d like me to read everything that’s been written on the subject before responding to other arguments that are made, that’s a fine standard, and I hope you’ll apply it to yourself in the future.
July 5, 2010, 6:48 pmBleh says:
In fact, come to think of it, I think I’d go further to say that I think I’ve been very clear so far in stating that I’m coming at this issue from a biased prospective. In order, to understand the issue better I’ve asked other people their opinions, I’ve requested data, etc. And because of this debate I would say that my opinions have shifted somewhat (if nothing else, I have an increased understanding of how gun regulations can be misused to regulate guns based on looks rather than function).
July 5, 2010, 6:57 pmJim Kilpatrick says:
@Arthur Kirkland: YES, I AM PREPARING for a fight, using deadly force, against the evil of communism/progressivism/socialism/facism and any other ism that presents itself. I’m hoping it won’t be necessary but …! I’m a bit confused about your comment of “my God is bigger and badder” ad nauseum BS because I didn’t say any such thing. I’m not relying on God to win the fight. God helps those who help themselves. I believe superior firepower, tactics and strategy will win the fight along with the other millions and millions of my fellow Freedom-loving Americans who value their liberty, and more importantly, that of their grandchildren (or posterity if you prefer). I also HOPE AND PRAY that foreign troops are brought in because there’s no doubt that will infuriate and engage millions and millions of more Americans to the side of freedom (I shoot at blue helmets frequently just so I’ll feel more relaxed when the real SHTF). I happen to believe you’re wrong but I do not want you, or those like you, to change your mindset. Keep thinking like you are, ok? I believe so strongly that I’m right that I’m happy to risk my life, fortune and sacred honor to ensure my posterity enjoys the same, and maybe even more, of the liberties and opportunities that I have. My seven year old grandson already shoots 3/4″ groups out to 70 yards with a full size (M-4gery), evil, ugly looking “assault rifle.” We shoot at things like Red Communist Flags, photos of self-described communists and things like that. MOLON LABE!
July 5, 2010, 7:06 pmJim Kilpatrick says:
Wonder how the below would fit into this argument:
1. Text of H.R. 1955 [110th]: Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention
http://www.govtrack.us/congress/billtext.xpd?bill=h110-1955
2. Obama Wants to Jail Americans with New Law
By Europe Union Times, Jun 15th, 2010
Foreign Ministry reports circulating in the Kremlin today are warning that an already explosive situation in the United States is about to get a whole lot worse as a new law put forth by President Obama is said capable of seeing up to 500,000 American citizens jailed for the crime of opposing their government.
July 5, 2010, 7:38 pmSparking the concern of Russian diplomats over the growing totalitarian bent of the Obama government is the planned reintroduction of what these reports call one of the most draconian laws ever introduced in a free society that is titled “The Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act”.
First introduced in the US Congress in 2007 by Democratic Representative Jane Harmon, this new law passed the US House of Representatives by a secretive voice vote, but failed to pass the US Senate, after which it was believed dead until this past week when it was embraced by Obama who became the first American President to name his own citizens as a threat to his Nations security.
In what is called the National Security Strategy document, that is required of US Presidents by their Congress, that embraces the dictatorial ideals of the “Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act”, Obama has ordered his Federal police and intelligence forces to begin targeting Americans opposed to him and his radical socialist polices.
Obama’s top counter-terrorism advisor, John Brennan, in speaking to reporters about this new “strategy” says it makes the problem of home-grown terrorists a top priority because an increasing number of individuals in the US have become “captivated by extremist ideology or causes.”
The Times of London is further reporting that Obama’s new National Security Strategy “officially” ends America’s “War on Terror” in what they call “a sweeping repudiation of the Bush doctrine of pre-emptive military strikes.”
And as Obama begins re-focusing his forces from fighting America’s foreign enemies, to those opposed to him in his own country, it is important to remember the warning about this new law given by the former CIA official, Philip Giraldi, who had previously warned of the Bush-Cheney plan to attack Iran with nuclear weapons, and who said:
“The mainstream media has made no effort to inform the public of the impending Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act. The Act, which was sponsored by Congresswoman Jane Harman of California, was passed in the House by an overwhelming 405 to 6 vote on October 24th and is now awaiting approval by the Senate Homeland Security Committee, which is headed by Senator Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut.
Harman’s bill contends that the United States will soon have to deal with home grown terrorists and that something must be done to anticipate and neutralize the problem. The act deals with the issue through the creation of a congressional commission that will be empowered to hold hearings, conduct investigations, and designate various groups as “homegrown terrorists.”
The commission will be tasked to propose new legislation that will enable the government to take punitive action against both the groups and the individuals who are affiliated with them. Like Joe McCarthy and HUAC in the past, the commission will travel around the United States and hold hearings to find the terrorists and root them out.
Unlike inquiries in the past where the activity was carried out collectively, the act establishing the Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Commission will empower all the members on the commission to arrange hearings, obtain testimony, and even to administer oaths to witnesses, meaning that multiple hearings could be running simultaneously in various parts of the country.
The ten commission members will be selected for their “expertise,” though most will be appointed by Congress itself and will reflect the usual political interests. They will be paid for their duties at the senior executive pay scale level and will have staffs and consultants to assist them.
Harman’s bill does not spell out terrorist behavior and leaves it up to the Commission itself to identify what is terrorism and what isn’t.
Language inserted in the act does partially define “homegrown terrorism” as “planning” or “threatening” to use force to promote a political objective, meaning that just thinking about doing something could be enough to merit the terrorist label.
The act also describes “violent radicalization” as the promotion of an “extremist belief system” without attempting to define “extremist.”
As an example of those American’s Obama will be targeting, Giraldi further writes that The Simon Wiesenthal Center, in testifying before the US Congress in support of this new law, swore that an organization called “Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth” was an example of a homegrown terrorist organization, leading one Russian diplomat in this report to state:
“If 1,200 of America’s top architectural and engineering professionals are deemed terrorists simply because they question their governments propaganda than truly no one is safe in the United States anymore”.
As another example of how dictatorial the Obama regime has become, and as the Gulf of Mexico oil debacle has now become the worst ecological disaster our World has ever seen, the White House press secretary, Robert Gibbs, this past week slammed American reporters for “asking too many questions about BP”.
Leading one to ask that if Obama’s regime can’t be asked about this disaster, what can they be asked about?
The answer is apparently none, as Obama himself, just this past week, in announcing his signing of a new law called the Press Freedom Act refused to answer any reporters’ questions and abruptly left them standing in stupefaction over the irony an ordeal that shows how far America has fallen.
Another irony apparently lost upon the American people is that their President Obama, who has been dubbed “The Great Communicator”, now holds the dubious distinction of having held fewer press conferences than any American President in modern history.
And if yesterday’s press conference, his first in nearly a year, was any example one can see why as incredulous press corps was left astounded that Obama had no knowledge of the firing/resignation of one of his top officials.
In all of these events one fact, beyond all others, stands out….in what was once called “The Land of the Free, And the Home of the Brave”…..the United States today has become “The Land Of Slave, And the Home of the Coward”….and these Americans have only themselves to blame.
cboldt says:
– used the wrong quote in my last post –
July 5, 2010, 7:40 pmGiven the tight space and time of our exchange, that was clear, and your meaning wasn’t lost on account of the error. I knew exactly what you were referring to.
– If you’d like me to read everything that’s been written on the subject before responding to other arguments that are made, that’s a fine standard, and I hope you’ll apply it to yourself in the future. –
I think that standard is unreasonably tight. My sentiment toward a post is based on the substance of the response, whether it sticks to the subject, makes reasonable parallels, is based on accurate fact and/or history, etc. I know none of us is error-free; plus this is an informal forum with negligible stakes.
Arthur Kirkland says:
Jim
You asked God for necessary sustenance
and that inclines me to believe you will fail in your quest, as have Eric Rudolph, Scott Roeder, Timothy McVeigh, those Michigan/Ohio screwballs, Clayton Waagner, David Koresh and the rest of the “mission from God” conservative crusaders.
You keep fantasizing about foreign invaders, armed conflict with domestic enemies, blue helmets, black helicopters and your sacred honor (while continuing to avoid familiarity with rules of capitalization — what attracts conservative extremists so strongly to improper capitalization?), but you might take a moment to prepare yourself for the disappointment associated with learning that your grandson, when he is old enough to recognize what a deluded and grotesque fraud his shooting sessions with granddad were, becomes a dope-smoking, gay-tolerating, college-degreed, science-hugging liberal, courtesy of the socialists’ student loan program.
July 5, 2010, 7:51 pmJim Kilpatrick says:
@Cboldt: I agree that the progressives/communists are trying everything they can to distort our true history and usurp individual liberty with bogus “informing and conditioning.” That’s why I am working at getting government OUT OF EDUCATION. Especially the Feds as there’s nothing I can find in the U.S. Constitution granting them any powers in that regard. But, I also strongly believe State governments shouldn’t be allowed to interfere in our schools. Schools and the education of OUR children should be the sole and primary responsibility of parents and parent-teacher cooperation. How well the kids are doing on college admissions test can be used to determine how well or not a particular community’s doing and can then guide necessary changes.
Until then, the “informing and conditioning” is going on at grandpa and grandma’s place and thanks to guys like Glenn Beck we don’t have any shortage of reference materials.
God Bless America (I included this especially for you Arthur Kirkland!)
July 5, 2010, 8:04 pmRichard Ketchum says:
You are joking right? If it is constitutional to put a tax on the ownership of firearms it would be constitutional to put a tax on voting, you have to remember that nothing is done in a vacuum, any restrictions that apply to one right apply to all rights. This fact is one that way too many people either were ever taught or want to ignore, they think the rights they like are sacred and that all others can be restricted anyway others want. It is not just the First Amendment that would be imperiled if the unconstitutional fees are allowed to stand but the other eight as well. Think hard on the fact that if one right can be restricted for any reason all rights can be restricted for any reason.
July 5, 2010, 8:20 pmArthur Kirkland says:
And may Humpty Dumpty, Goldilocks and Cinderella bless you, Jim, except when you are fantasizing about shooting anyone who doesn’t share your wingnut delusions.
July 5, 2010, 8:25 pmJim Kilpatrick says:
Arthur, Arthur, Arthur: If you think I’M a Timothy McVeigh, then it is clear who the “crazy one” here is and it ain’t me. Too funny!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Some of that communist “informing and conditioning and distorting” stuff. Bwahahahahhahahahahahahhahahahahahaha.
I would NEVER intentionally, or even unintentionally if I could avoid it, harm any innocents or noncombatants. I WILL do everything in my power to kill and maim any individual that takes up arms against the American people and tries to force them into any kind of subjugation. For example, see my post above regarding the “Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act.” I WILL FIGHT WITH DEADLY FORCE the implementation of any such policy/legislation. I WILL FIGHT any declaration of Martial Law and attempts to restrict civil liberties because there is NO LEGITIMATE AUTHORITY granted either the Congress, and especially the executive branch, to impose any such limitations. The constitution only authorizes the suspension of the Writ of Habeaus Corpus in the event of “insurrections and invasions.” If there is already an insurrection in process, then I would assume freedom loving Americans have already made their choice and the fight is already on.
I have no intent or wish to go out and start executing people although there are indeed several in Congress and the gangster Obama administration that are truly deserving (not to mention all those still alive that “served” unfaithfully in the past). I would NEVER, even in time of war, consider intentionally harming children as our Islamic and leftist brothers so willingly do every day around the World. I’m not a terrorist. I’m no more a radical than George Washington, Patrick Henry, Thomas Jefferson or the other founding fathers but I AM JUST AS COMMITTED TO THE PRINCIPLES UPON WHICH THEY FOUNDED THIS COUNTRY AND JUST AS WILLING TO KILL TO PRESERVE OUR FREE REPUBLIC as they were. I’m not trying to say even that I deserve to be mentioned in the same breath as such great men. I don’t because, thusfar, I’ve done nothing to earn it. I can only hope that IF or WHEN the time comes, I can successfully meet the challenges to preserve the Republic for which they and millions of other brave Americans have fought and died! And that is my prayer.
But also know Arthur, that I will also be praying for you and there’s absolutely nothing you can do about it!
July 5, 2010, 8:25 pmBleh says:
Different opinions from your own = treason?
July 5, 2010, 8:41 pmJim Kilpatrick says:
@Bleh: Not even worth addressing!
July 5, 2010, 8:47 pmArthur Kirkland says:
Jim
Do you genuinely believe that several members of Congress and of the Obama administration deserve to be killed, or are you just babbling?
July 5, 2010, 8:58 pmJim Kilpatrick says:
@ Arthur: I don’t worry about my grandson becoming a subject of the “socialist” loan program or any other socialistic programs as by the time he’s gets out of high school any attempt at socialism in America will have failed. Either because of deadly force opposition by the people or economic collapse of the entire country. Once everyone is either working for the government or drawing entitlements from it and there’s no private sector, where’s the government going to get the money to survive. They’ve already printed too much and the “equal and opposite” reaction thereto is forthcoming. When that “chicken comes home to roost” more and more Americans will realize the folly going on and well, let’s just see what happens!
Thanks to the blog owners for providing this forum. I’ve got to log off and do something constructive toward the goals I’ve written about above, among others, and don’t have anymore time to address the progressive trolls attempting to antagonize me.
God’s blessings to all – especially Bleh and Arthur – and if you don’t believe in God or Divine Providence or Natural Intelligence, then just substitute Humpty Dumpty et. al. and have a good week.
July 5, 2010, 9:00 pmJim Kilpatrick says:
OK, this IS IT!
Arthur: Do I sound like I’m “just babbling”?
OUT!
July 5, 2010, 9:07 pmmack says:
During the revolutionary war private citizens owned ships with cannon – understand that even during that time there were not just ball and grape shot but also explosive grenade type ordinance – imagine such a ship sailing up to a city or other seaside community and letting loose with broadside after broadside – twenty cannon or more firing again and again into the town with ball and shot and explosive, and even incendiaries. That was a possibility then – to loot and sack a town and burn it to the ground.
But of course what would such an outdated weapons system be capable of today – well imagine such a ship doing the same thing today – certainly given modern airpower and military force it would be destroyed within moments of the militaries arrival. But how long until they got there and reacted – what damage could such an ancient weapon inflict on a modern city – one with a refinery near the coast – or a stadium – or office buildings – or a port packed with ships unloading petrol or chemicals or other volatile substances.
The point is that today we might worry about allowing common access to a machine gun (there are well over 100,000 in private hands anyway), and yet weapons that could do much more damage were owned during the revolution. Of course there are much simpler and direct ways of inflicting massive damage than firearms still readily available – heck a dozen pissed off farmers could take out the heart of any major city in the country if they wanted to – just utilizing common knowledge with vehicles and chemicals readily available to them on a daily basis.
And yet, we have to fight tooth and nail just for recognition and permission to exercise that right to keep and bear one hundred year old technology with which to defend ourselves and our loved ones.
Gun control has had no measurable positive effect on crime and violence in any country where it has been implemented. John Lott has a standing challenge to anyone who can provide data showing a positive correlation between the implementation of gun control and a subsequent decrease in violent crime.
If criminals can obtain guns, knives, drugs, and sex in prison – and continue to run their criminal enterprises from prison on a daily basis using contraband cell phones – what do you think the odds are that gun control is going to materially effect criminals ability to obtain and use guns – it never has and it never will – then we disarm those citizens who could use a firearm to defend themselves and make them effectively defenseless for the criminals.
God, the idiocy of gun control is so maddening. People who have no knowledge of firearms except the news and Hollywood – supporting the deprivation of a fundamental right not just from themselves but from their fellow citizens.
What I really want to know though – is what is the motivation of those in positions of power – to endorse and implement gun control – surely they are not so stupid and uninformed that they really believe that gun control works. The only reason I can see for gun control is control – to make individuals into helpless victims of crime and criminals – to make people more and more dependent on government. If that should be so, then that is evil – but then again neither party is interested in preventing illegal immigration since they want either the votes and/or cheap labor – to keep labor costs down – which also shows a depth of heartless cold calculation.
I don’t know, I would hate to believe such things – but the alternative is that our leaders really are idiots.
July 5, 2010, 10:37 pmjuris imprudent says:
Jim Kilpatrick, you need to check primary sources. That was the 110th Congress and died in the Senate nearly two years ago – before Obama was even elected. The “Europe Union Times” bit didn’t happen to come from an e-mail rather than a website did it?
July 6, 2010, 12:20 amRonNYC says:
Again, your logic is faulty. The reason you offer for protection of courts from guns is that it can be controlled. Not that judges lives are more valuable. So, by that logic, if you can control guns throughout the country, they should be controlled.
I believe that if guns were confiscated; gun manufacture were forbidden; gun importation were forbidden, there would certainly be very much fewer guns in the country and automatically, very much fewer deaths from guns. You can’t say that gun possession protects people from random gun shots. Many people are killed in poor neighborhoods due to cross fire or being shot in their homes. There is no protection from that. The Supreme Court’s ruling basically affirms that their lives are disposable. If not, then why not permit guns everywhere, with no restriction. It’s totally illogical and therefore driven by a far right NRA ideology.
July 6, 2010, 1:28 amTim Starr says:
Gun prohibition would work no better than drug prohibition. Drug prohibition doesn’t lead to less deaths, it leads to more. Gun prohibition would also lead to more deaths. Gun prohibition would just lead to guns being smuggled into the country from elsewhere, packed in bales of cocaine.
Predicting less deaths “from guns” is disingenuous; deaths are deaths, no matter what the weapon.
An armed society does protect against random shootings, by suppressing the overall crime rate. Innocent bystanders only get caught in the crossfire in places where it’s generally illegal for people to carry guns for self-defense, like LA.
There’s another rather obvious way to protect against stray shots going through the walls of your house and killing you: Fortify the walls of your house. If you can’t afford that, then you can do what people do when a shooting breaks out in one of your gun-free utopias: Sleep in your metal bathtubs, if you have one.
July 6, 2010, 1:49 amDonL says:
The license issue upon a right has already been settled. Using Marriage License jurisprudence is inappropriate as creating a three party general partnership between a man, woman, and the state is not a right…Simply put, if you want to involve the state in your marriage, you have to pay the license fee. It’s the legal nexus to the state’s jurisdiction into marriage disputes….Divorce, child custody and so on.
U.S. Supreme Court
319 U.S. 105 (1943)
MURDOCK v. COMMONWEALTH OF PENNSYLVANIA
“The power to tax the exercise of a privilege is the power to control or suppress its enjoyment. Magnano Co. v. Hamilton, 292 U.S. 40, 44, 45 S., 54 S.Ct. 599, 601, and cases cited.”
“It is contended, however, that the fact that the license tax can suppress or control this activity is unimportant [319 U.S. 105, 113] if it does not do so. But that is to disregard the nature of this tax. It is a license tax – a flat tax imposed on the exercise of a privilege granted by the Bill of Rights. A state may not impose a charge for the enjoyment of a right granted by the federal constitution.”
July 6, 2010, 6:42 amPappadave says:
The Right to Keep and Bear Arms is NOT a “right granted by the federal constitution.” It is a right AFFIRMED thereby, but is a right that all free citizens are assumed to have…a “natural right,” if you prefer, merely by virtue of one being a free citizen. It goes back to the Magna Carta which ended the old theory of “might makes right” in which only the nobility were permitted weapons. In any dispute between a commoner and a member of the peerage, it was assumed that the dispute could be settled by individual combat, if everything else failed, in which case, the nobleman was ALWAYS “proven right” because his commoner opponent wasn’t permitted a weapon.
July 6, 2010, 7:03 ambrolin1911a1 says:
Your example begs another obvious question. If availability of guns increases crime and restricting guns reduces crime, why do those places with less restrictive laws have less crime than those which restrict guns? Why, if you can easily buy a gun in South Carolina, is the crime greater in New York where restrictive laws presumably make it more difficult to obtain a gun?
When this argument of “guns from lax gun law areas” was first being raised by New York’s US Rep. McCarthy, I pointed out to my own Rep. how illogical that claim was and is. Washington, DC is surrounded by less restrictive states. It is only a walk or drive of a few hundred yards across a bridge or a short transit ride to cross from D.C. where for all practical purposes guns are still prohibited to Alexandria, VA where guns are easily obtained. Yet the violent crime rate on the south end of that bridge is an order of magnitude less than that on the north shore of the Potomac. If easy availability of guns made the difference then the situation should be reversed. Maybe what’s needed is to make it lots easier to get those guns from North Carolina into the hands of responsible, law-abiding, respectable New York citizens instead of trying to ruin things for those where guns provide personal safety and a check on criminals.
An excellent question that truly illustrates the elitist nature of restrictive gun laws. But the question as phrased contains a hidden assumption that’s invalid, i.e., that guns are completely banned. The “authorities” in the form of law enforcement are still allowed THEIR guns in that courtroom and, in many places, so is the judge.
I will not argue, however, that this is a bad thing in the case of courtrooms, however. That is a special environment where almost by definition parties present are under unique stresses and threats, where potential loss of finances, freedom, and even life as well as desires for retribution could easily lead to what would otherwise be irrational acts. In that special case, it makes sense to have only the arbitrating authority, the judge and guards, armed in order to allow them to control and maintain order in that restricted environment.
But outside that courtroom, there is no real possibility of such control. No one outside of elites such as Mayor Bloomberg has armed security escorting them through their daily lives. Your child is on his own and you, unarmed, are just as much at risk escorting him to school. Why, indeed, should you be disarmed and helpless? Why should teachers and school authorities be kept helpless?
The answer is that you should not be. The right to self defense, the right to keep and bear the arms for that personal defense, is an essential and fundamental natural right that our Bill of Rights only recognizes and affirms rather than grants. And those who deny it are, ultimately, denying your right to life except at their pleasure.
July 6, 2010, 8:22 amRonNYC says:
It is sad you feel fear visiting New York City but your fear, perhaps based in mental illness (I don’t know you), is no reason to grant you the right to carry a deadly weapon so you can protect yourself from imaginary enemies. I live in NYC and have since the early 1970s and I have NEVER had a problem of any sort; never had a gun pointed at me; never threatened; nothing. And I’ve been in the subways at all hours of the night; walked very lonely streets at night by myself. NEVER a problem, not once. I’m not particularly fearsome, so it isn’t that the bad guys are frightened of me.
July 6, 2010, 8:30 amRonNYC says:
Your logic is flawed. For instance, in Tennessee, it is quite easy to get a carry permit and nearly impossible in NYC. Yet, Memphis is one of the ten most dangerous cities over 500,000 in the country; New York City one of the safest.
I’m not saying there is a direct correlation between gun laws and gun crime, but this example certainly counters the argument that law gun laws make places safer.
As for your comparison between a child and Mayor Bloomberg, are you asserting that the child would be safer is armed? Like every gun advocate I’ve read, your logic is inconsistent and your position moves. Again, if guns were entirely banned in the US, there would be much fewer gun deaths. I think that is a good thing.
Oh yes, and the other most dangerous cities, Phoenix, Houston, Dallas, Nashville, Charlotte, Little Rock.
July 6, 2010, 8:42 amRKV says:
Well Ron, the Constitution is pretty clear about the right to keep and bear arms. Don’t get your little knickers in a twist, but the choice ain’t up to you whether Gaunilo has the right or not. Your state’s unconstitutional legislative enactments notwithstanding, you and your ilk lost the argument at the Supes.
Now people who think like you are going to attempt to pull a Cruikshank or a Presser on the 2nd Amendment (again [lol]) and gut the plain meaning of the 2nd Amendment. Do your worst.
At the root, this discussion is about power and trust, and particularly where they intersect. Most (and that is now a 65% proposition if the current polls are to be believed) Americans trust their neighbors and believe that we should all be empowered to defend ourselves and our families. Some Americans don’t feel that way. They’d prefer Americans wait for the police to arrive so the police can draw chalk lines around the bodies. Call it the “European way” if that suits you (well except for the Swiss and Finns who own firearms in significantly larger proportions than other Europeans). Whatever you call the proposition, my point is that the majority of Americans are going to impose American gun laws on you and on New York state. For a parallel, this is pretty much the same story as Americans imposing equal rights on recalcitrant segregationists in the 1950′s and 1060′s. Get over it.
What gun control really was in NY, was your politicians’ corruption and insanity – do a bit of research on the Sullivan Act and the life of Tammany Hall politico Timothy Sullivan if you want confirmation of that. Nota bene: I’ll save you the google – the author of the bill, Big Tim Sullivan, was committed to an asylum one year after the passage of the Sullivan Act with tertiary syphilis.
July 6, 2010, 9:11 amRonNYC says:
Yes, bear arms for a militia. That is certainly a valid interpretation and one I think will prevail once the conservative, GOP bloc on the Court is reduced by one or two.
As for the rest of your argument, it is really just scream therapy. I don’t care about Sullivan or Tammany Hall and if you need to invoke them to make a case, your case is pretty weak. No matter how you or any of the NRA try to dance around it, guns kill people; no guns = no gun deaths. It’s really just that easy.
July 6, 2010, 9:27 amFederal Farmer says:
Is really? First, let us assume you had a magic wand that could make all the guns disappear and eliminate the knowledge of gun manufacturing.
Would that be a wonderful world in which to live? Didn’t we have that world about 1000 years ago? Didn’t we call that the ‘Dark Ages’?
Such a gun-free ‘utopia’ would be a world where the weak were prey to the strong. So the 80 yr old man who shot the 30 yr old home invader, his 83 yr old wife, and their grandson should have been disarmed and helpless prey for whatever the invader wanted? Too bad for them, but at least we got our gun-free ‘utopia’.
It kinda sickens me to know so many people that are willing to trade off the lives of so many in the name of their ‘righteous’ cause.
July 6, 2010, 9:36 amMichael Ejercito says:
Because it is not their goal.
And how do you get no guns? The same way no heroin means no River Phoenix dying from a heroin overdose?
And the militia is the common body of people.
Your thinking is belied by the experiences of Mexico and Jamaica.
Would a ban on alcohol reduce crime?
Clearly, you are not black.
How safe were Amadou Diallo, Patrick Dorismond, and Sean Bell?
You steer clear of the historical evidence the same way creationists steer clear of the geological evidence.
Is Mayor Bloomberg less safe for having his armed security?
If the government truly believed that guns were bad, they would disarm themselves first.
And how would you control guns in the country?
Adopt policies akin to South Africa’s policies during apartheid?
When we adopted the
Taliban’s attitude towards women.
Heroin is banned in New York, South Carolina, and California.
Were reports of River Phoenix’s death outside the Viper Room a hoax?
Gun grabbers want to eliminate the 1st, 4th, 5th, 8th, and especially the 13th Amendments.
One of the unique properties of gun bans is that they are enforced by people who are not bound by them.
Bigamy bans are not enforced by bigamists.
Prohibition was not enforced by drunk people.
Heroin bans are not enforced by heroin users.
Same-sex “marriage” bans are not enforced by same-sex “married” people.
July 6, 2010, 9:49 amRonNYC says:
And guns help the kids shot on the way to school; shot in cross fire; shot in their homes from outside; shot when they get into daddy’s gun collection. Anyway, you didn’t address my point at all, which tells me you basically agree with it even though you don’t like it. No guns = no gun deaths. Simple, n’est pas?
Anyway, perhaps you can explain to parents of killed children the joys of the 2nd Amendment.
July 6, 2010, 9:51 amMichael Ejercito says:
Guns also help unarmed black men shot by the police.
No guns, no police= no unarmed black men shot to death by police
July 6, 2010, 9:55 amretrocon says:
The only way to make this work is to lie. There is a clear statistical correlation showing that increased gun ownership, and relaxing of carry rules, leads to LESS violent crime and therefore, less costs to society.
But the liberal mentality is simple… start to tax, as the number of privately owned, legal guns goes down, and the crime rates go up, they will use the increased crime to justify higher taxes. Once the privately owned guns go away altogether (except for the wealthy/elite), and crime is rampant, they will start on knives, large dogs, whatever it takes to force us into deeper dependency on the government.
It’s very simple, and “transparent.”
July 6, 2010, 9:56 amRonNYC says:
If this is the level of counterargument, then this is an easy win for me. It is clear that the pro-gun argument is based on a truncated view of the 2nd Amendment. Aside from that there is no public good deriving from gun ownership.
July 6, 2010, 10:06 amArthur Kirkland says:
The Supreme Court perceived an individual right (governed by reasonable restrictions) to possess a gun in the home for self-defense. I liked the ruling (although I probably would have preferred change in the underlying reasoning).
That ruling was achieved by 5-4 vote after an extended period of 7-2 and 6-3 Republican majorities on the Court. That period of statistically unlikely Republican dominance has ended, perhaps to be succeeded by a period in which the preferences of conservative justices are to be overridden by those of liberal justices. Our society survived the Warren Court, the Rehnquist Court, Johnson, Nixon, Carter, Reagan, Clinton and Bush II, and I expect it to survive whichever lineup succeeds the Rehnquist Court.
But regardless of the makeup of the Court in the future, it has not adopted and seems unlikely to adopt the view that the Second Amendment includes a largely unregulated right for any citizen to carry any weapon at any time at any location for any purpose. Indeed, I believe that my ilk — people who support the possession of a reasonable weapon in the home for self-defense, but are skeptical about “rights” involving intense weapons, registration, recreational shooting, and the like, believing reasonable regulation of weapons to be lawful and wise — is more likely to prevail in establishing the law in Heller’s wake than are those who favor an “anything goes” treatment of weapons.
July 6, 2010, 10:06 amFederal Farmer says:
Arthur, can you explain a clear compelling governmental interest in a city, like Chicago, keeping a list of firearms owned by its residents?
Seems like an invasion of privacy and I see no benefit to society that compels.
Recently the Supt of Police in Chicago admitted that they rarely, if ever, charge gun crimes at the local level (ordinance violation) but always seek the higher state and federal violations. Also, the registry to date has been unautomated and not available to any officer responding to an address. Even if it were, I don’t see how knowledge of what firearms are registered to the address to which they are responding.
July 6, 2010, 10:15 amFederal Farmer says:
It is easy to win if you ignore the opposing posts. Above I clearly show the benefit of gun ownership. I clearly show the downside of a gun-free ‘utopia’.
July 6, 2010, 10:17 amMichael Ejercito says:
If the government believed that, they would disarm themselves first.
Explain to me why Chuck Schumer has a pistol permit.
My test for reasonableness include these tests.
If a weapon is used by police, banning it is unreasonable.
If the police carry a weapon in a certain manner, banning carrying weapons in that manner is unreasonable.
July 6, 2010, 10:17 amcboldt says:
RKV: — attempt to pull a Cruikshank or a Presser on the 2nd Amendment (again [lol]) and gut the plain meaning of the 2nd Amendment. –
July 6, 2010, 10:34 amYou should read those cases for yourself. The Courts have been lying about what those cases say, and what they stand for.
Presser is about whether or not the 2nd amendment protects a right to parade without a permit. “No it does not. Parade permitting is the exercise of a police power.” (my paraphrase)
The Presser Court discussed the relationship between the RKBA and the 2nd amendment, and concluded that states could NOT deprive the people of the RKBA. Whether or not there was a 2nd amendment is irrelevant input to reach that conclusion. The people HAVE an RKBA, had it before the government was formed, and the people didn’t surrender it when the government was formed.
Cruikshank is about whether or not one person can obtain relief against a private party via the 2nd amendment. Black letter law is that the constitution and its amendments address government action, not personal action. Not that the Courts won’t remedy theft, battery, murder, etc. – but those are state law issues, not constitutional issues.
But, you are right about the gun grabbers. They are irrational, and they are dangerous to liberty.
TomRay says:
I can see taxing or having a license to have a weapon, so long as the fees are not excessively high— BUT Such fees and permits MUST NOT apply to a specific weapon. The latter would amount to a tool by which the citizenry could be disarmed–The goons would know what guns were there and who had them, should the “wrong” people come to power.
July 6, 2010, 10:40 amWith just a general permit or license, no one would really know if a holder really had a weapon or not(which is the preffered case if such laws are to be enacted) BEWARE of ANY laws that have individual WEAPONS on record along with the owner.
thorschariot says:
in Chicago, firing ranges are for Police use ONLY! also, there is a law prohibiting the opening of any new ranges within the city.
July 6, 2010, 10:53 amRonNYC says:
So basically then you see little difference between the police carrying weapons and armed gangbangers, or militia types, who, under current laws, can easily obtain weapons; or your Aryan Nations’ neighbor has a gigantic arsenal in his house.
Guns in the hands of the citizenry serve absolutely no purpose except to increase danger to the public.
July 6, 2010, 10:55 ambrolin1911a1 says:
No, your understanding of the argument is faulty. The reason for protection of courts from guns is that the occupants of those courts can be controlled. There are still guns in the courts. It’s just that possession of those guns is restricted to the government agents charged with maintaining order within those courts. The only way to achieve that same effect outside of the courts would be to station a squad or more of armed police on every block of every street or to have one or more armed police accompany every citizen everywhere he or she goes. Even then there would be no guarantees as a determined criminal could simply ambush the armed cop and take his or her weapon.
Is there something particularly abhorrent about deaths caused by gunfire compared to deaths caused by knives, bludgeons, nylon stocking garrotes, brickbats, screwdrivers, axes, chains, or even bare hands? Do you honestly believe that such alternative means of violence would not be implemented were guns truly unavailable? Would those deaths then not matter?
Some years back, the Philadelphia Inquirer ran a series of investigative reports on gang violence. One of those dealt with the increasing use of baseball bats by gang members because carrying a ball bat did not automatically trigger the charges and enhanced penalties of carrying a firearm. (What, you thought all of those thugs in the rap music videos had ball bats because they were ardent baseball fans?!?) In that news story, the reporter interviewed emergency room personal as well as police. She learned that those injured by baseball bats were more likely than gunshot victims to be killed or permanently disabled. But hey! At least those would be GUN deaths.
As for guns being unavailable if all manufacture of them was banned, well, that’s a fantasy also. One night while I was in college I was visiting my electronics teacher. The subject of making blowguns from electrical conduit arose. So we had to try. Our “dart” turned out to heavy to propel with mere lung power so we tried capping one end of the tube, adding a Schraeder valve from an innertube, and using an air compressor. That was better but still unsatisfactory. Figuring that perhaps chemically generated gas would work better, we mixed up some sugar and a commonly available oxidizer. We also substituted a ball bearing for the now-too light “dart.” Our “blowgun” sent the ball bearing through the 3/4″ plywood target. Success!
My teacher then looked at me and said, “You know what we’ve just done, don’t you?” I asked, “What?” He replied, “We’ve just reinvented the musket. It took us all of two hours. So much for gun control.”
That story illustrates the fact that guns have been invented. The science is ridiculously simple and readily available. I and two friends made our first gun powder using Roger Bacon’s ancient formula while in sixth grade behind our middle school. Pakistani blacksmiths make excellent copies of modern assault rifles in garages using simple hand tools. No law will ever put that genie back in the bottle. The only thing that gun control laws can achieve is to disarm the good people while leaving the bad people free to prey on unarmed victims.
I’d find your statements and faulty logic amusing were it not so commonly shared among the current populace of our country. You are correct in saying that mere gun possession cannot protect against stray bullets. But common gun possession does, in a society that accepts it, lead to proper firearms knowledge and behavior and that does provide such protection.
I live on the edge of a small town of about 11,000 people. The sound of gunfire coming from my neighbors’ homes just down the road from me and just outside of the city limits is relatively common. They often target practice in their backyards. The only emotional response engendered by that sound is either a.) curiosity regarding what make/model firearm they’re shooting, or b.) an urge to grab a gun and walk down the road and join them.
About five years ago, I helped start a 4-H Shooting Sports club. As I stood in the room at the first meeting of our new club, I looked out and asked the fifty boys and girls, aged 8 – 16, “How many of you have your own rifle?” So many hands went up that I rephrased, “How many do NOT have your own rifle?” Only three hands went up and the none of the three eight-year old girls was among them: they all three already had their own rifles.
And you know what? Violent crimes are very, very rare in this area and accidental shootings of youths outside of hunting accidents is almost unheard of because our children are taught from the time that they can understand the spoken word that guns are to be treated and handled with respect. Just as they are taught to look both ways before crossing the street or highway and not to put their fingers in the light socket, so they are taught the basic fundamentals of gun safety. The gun is a tool that, like any tool, can be used or misused. With proper training of the user, the gun can do great good.
July 6, 2010, 11:18 amFederal Farmer says:
I’m not sure why you continue making this inane assertion. Read this article and then tell me how the 80-yr-old man would have stopped the 30-yr-old home invader without his gun?
In your gun-free ‘utopia’ there is no way this man could have protected his family. The weak, the elderly, the handicapped, the children, etc. live or die at the whim of the strong.
July 6, 2010, 11:20 amRKV says:
“The Courts have been lying about what those cases say, and what they stand for.” Precisely my point. Unless we are very careful, Heller and McDonald are going to get the same treatment. Pay attention to Nordyke and Heller 2, coming to the Supes at a rapid pace.
July 6, 2010, 11:23 amcboldt says:
– Unless we are very careful, Heller and McDonald are going to get the same treatment. –
July 6, 2010, 11:32 amHeller continued the tradition of Court dishonesty. “Miller was convicted,” and all the ramifications that flow from that falsehood are being entrenched as “good” law.
“Being careful” has nothing to do with it. The falsehoods produced by the Courts were used for decades to enable the government to forcibly remove arms from the public, and to jail those who would not submit.
cboldt says:
– Pay attention to Nordyke and Heller 2, coming to the Supes at a rapid pace. –
July 6, 2010, 11:36 amI think Nordyke doesn’t change. The 2nd amendment does not protect a right to conduct any sort of function at a publicly-owned facility. The 2nd amendment isn’t about a “right to a gun show,” any more than it is about “a right to parade without a permit.”
I give Heller II about a 1 in 20 chance of advancing to SCOTUS. The DC Circuit will decide the extent of regulation that is permissible.
thorschariot says:
July 6, 2010, 11:39 amRKV says:
Careful has a lot to do with it – mainly because most judges don’t like to be watched. We need to do a much better job of naming and shaming their failures. See the civil rights movement for reference. Sunlight – disinfectant and all that.
I think Nordyke does change because the gov is treating lawful businesses differently – this discretion is not allowed. Same as if the Scots fesival gets approval and the gay festival does not. Wrong on Heller 2 as well, because Gura will challenge DC (again) because DC will assuredly get regulation wrong. Hopefully another (5-4 or better) smackdown. Time, place and manner and carry, need better definition and standard of scrutiny set.
July 6, 2010, 11:43 amcboldt says:
– Careful has a lot to do with it — mainly because most judges don’t like to be watched. We need to do a much better job of naming and shaming their failures. –
I won’t disagree with that. How much have you (the public) heard about Hamblen’s case? Where the false read of Miller, produced by the Heller Court, was used to uphold a conviction?
How many people are aware of the 180 degree disconnect between what Presser says, and what the Federal Courts claim Presser says, about the RKBA?
Is there any comment from any, even one single member of Congress, expressing concern, disappointment, or outrage that Courts are facilitating the jailing of people on utterly false reading of precedent? There won’t be, because Congress is the agent that passed the unconstitutional law in the first place.
I’m doing my part to undermine the foundation of legitimacy that these petty tyrants claim to have. “Rule of law” is “Rule of whatever I say.” The system merits contempt, not respect.
– Gura will challenge DC (again) because DC will assuredly get regulation wrong. –
He’s challenged the decision below, and will be heard by the DC Circuit. My point was that I think there is a 19/20 chance SCOTUS will not be interested enough to grant cert to review the DC Circuit’s decision. In Heller I, it was the District of Columbia that appealed to SCOTUS.
July 6, 2010, 11:54 amMichael Ejercito says:
Yes, there is one difference.
If gangbangers break into a house to look for drugs and kill someone as a result, they get prosecuted.
If police break into a house to look for drugs and kill someone as a result, nothing happens to them.
July 6, 2010, 12:16 pmRKV says:
I guess I read the Heller majority differently than you do. If I was a Supe and the DC pols blew me off, I’d be on them like a ton of bricks.
July 6, 2010, 12:28 pmmack says:
There are over 80 million gun owners and 300 million guns in this country. Guns are the only means of self-defense that result in less injury than non-resistance and they are by far the most effective means of preventing the completion of a crime, (see Gary Kleck for FBI/Bureau of Justice statistics). Thus, to deny an individual the right to possess and carry a firearm is to essentially deny them the right to self-defense – since you are denying them the only means of defending themselves that is more effective in preventing injury than non-resistance and the most effective means of preventing the completion of a crime, which is particularly important if the crime is murder or rape.
The Lott/Mustard study showed conclusively in a nationwide county by county study that states that allow citizens to possess and carry firearms have lower overall rates of violent crime than states that ban or severely restrict the right to possess or carry guns for self-defense and that where states changed their laws to allow shall issue ccw from bans or heavy restrictions on carry that their rates of violent crime declined.
Also, the last two years has seen record sales in firearms – such that there are more guns in the hands of private citizens than ever before and more shall issue ccw states and more ccw licensed citizens than ever before – yet the rate of violent crime has continued to drop as have the rates of accidental firearm deaths. Clearly there is no correlation that more guns and more people carrying guns equal more violent crime or murders or fatal gun accidents.
Those are all facts based on the governments own record keeping. Additionally a government study by the CDC (http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/rr5214a2.htm)
concluded that there is no evidence that gun control reduces violence or violent crime.
It is clear from the writings of the founding fathers and the contemporaneous state constitutions that the right to keep and bear arms was known to be an individual right and that the militia was essentially all male citizens of an age to defend themselves, their communities, states, and country. The majority of the citizens of this country since its founding have always held that the 2nd amendment protects an individual RKBA, a majority of modern historians and scholars who have studied this issue have come to the same conclusion, as has recently the USSC. Indeed the conflict that precipitated the armed struggle for independence that gave birth to our nation, arose from the British attempt to disarm their subjects of their privately owned and controlled arms – including muskets and cannon.
Traditionally, governments have throughout history have tended to claim that the right to arms and the right to use those arms are the purview of the state – even in the recent past history of the twentieth century – we have seen the fruits of that policy with 60 to 100 million citizens murdered by their own governments. The statement, “From my cold dead hands,” is not a threat or a boast or even a promise, it is statement of duty. One that recognizes that free men own arms and that slaves do not – (a man that is denied the practical means of that most basic of all rights – the right to defend his life is not a free man), one that says if you choose to institute gun bans and confiscation and a monopoly of force – then you are also implicitly choosing to use the force necessary to achieve those ends – that force being the violent murder of your fellow citizens – so if you are okay with that then by all means proceed down that road. Sadly history has shown that there are small men in all ages who are all too willing to enslave and murder their brethren.
What kind of a man is it who will pay others to protect him and his loved ones – but who shrinks from doing so himself? What kind of man is it who is willing to pay others to deprive a fellow man of his right to self-defense and the means to defend his families and loved ones – though the threat of lethal force? What kind of man is it who doesn’t want to take responsibility for his life and who wants to deny others of that right? A coward? A tyrant? A vapid wastrel that has no sense of duty or honor? http://rkba.org/comment/cowards.html
How is it that people stand freedom on its head, a free man does not ask permission to be armed, in a free society it is the government that asks permission to be armed. “Their swords, and every other terrible implement of the soldier, are the birth-right of an American … the unlimited power of the sword is not in the hands of either the federal or state governments, but, where I trust in God it will ever remain, in the hands of the people. “
July 6, 2010, 12:40 pmbrolin1911a1 says:
A truncated view of the 2nd Amendment? I thought you were trying to keep the 2nd Amendment out of the discussion and argue on the merits of armed vs helpless. No matter…
The 2nd Amendment states that “A well-regulated militia, being necessary to the preservation of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.” The sentence contains a declarative clause and an explanatory clause. The declarative clause, capable of standing alone, affirms the right of the people, the citizenry, the same individual people referred to in the 1st, 4th, 5th, 9th, and 10th Amendments to keep and bear arms without any infringement whatsoever. The explanatory phrase gives as one reason for this affirmation that an armed populace is necessary in order to provide the pool of trained (i.e., well-regulated) citizenry which make up the body of the militia. Tench Coxe, one of the Founding Fathers who adopted the 2nd Amendment, wrote, ” … Who are the militia? Are they not ourselves? Is it feared, then, that we shall turn our arms each man against his own bosom. Congress have no power to disarm the militia. Their swords, and every other terrible implement of the soldier, are the birth-right of an American … .”
I cited the 97th Congress’ Senate Judiciary Committee’s report to BLEH yesterday. I recommend that you read it as well. This report answers once and for all the relatively recent claim that the 2nd Amendment protected only the right of States to have a militia.
http://www.constitution.org/mil/rkba1982.htm
From page viii of the preface to the report by Sen. Orrin Hatch…
“Utilizing the research capabilities of the Subcommittee on the Constitution, the resources of the Library of Congress, and the assistance of constitutional scholars such as Mary Kaaren Jolly, Steven Halbrook, and David T. Hardy, the subcommittee has managed to uncover information on the right to keep and bear arms which documents quite clearly its status as a major individual right of American citizens. We did not guess at the purpose of the British 1689 Declaration of Rights; we located the Journals of the House of Commons and private notes of the Declaration’s sponsors, now dead for two centuries. We did not make suppositions as to colonial interpretations of that Declaration’s right to keep arms; we examined colonial newspapers which discussed it. We did not speculate as to the intent of the framers of the second amendment; we examined James Madison’s drafts for it, his handwritten outlines of speeches upon the Bill of Rights, and discussions of the second amendment by early scholars who were personal friends of Madison, Jefferson, and Washington while these still lived. What the Subcommittee on the Constitution uncovered was clear — and long lost — proof that the second amendment to our Constitution was intended as an individual right of the American citizen to keep and carry arms in a peaceful manner, for protection of himself, his family, and his freedoms.”
I suggest that before you make more claims regarding that “truncated” amendment you download and read that report from the above URL. I still have my copy purchased in 1983 and, in spite of having read several books on the subject since by authors such as David Hardy and Stephen Halbrook, that Senate report is still one of the most succinct and easy to understand histories of the 2nd Amendment I’ve found.
July 6, 2010, 12:40 pmcboldt says:
– I guess I read the Heller majority differently than you do. If I was a Supe and the DC pols blew me off, I’d be on them like a ton of bricks. –
July 6, 2010, 12:50 pmThat triggers thoughts about two different points, to me. As for SCOTUS being miffed at the District, the District’s actions are under risk of continual Court review, but first at the District and Circuit levels. My sense is that as long as SCOTUS thinks the Circuit is close enough, there is no reason for them to join the fray. In Heller I, I think SCOTUS wanted to modify and water down the Circuit Court’s majority rhetoric relating to the Miller case.
Another question is what are we, the public, supposed to think when the highest Court in the land reads, “he District Court held that section 11 of the Act violates the Second Amendment. It accordingly sustained the demurrer and quashed the indictment.” as “The judgment in the case upheld against a Second Amendment challenge two men’s federal convictions for transporting an unregistered short-barreled shotgun in interstate commerce …”
The Court is blowing off the public, that’s what I think. Did the same sort of thing with Presser, for decades.
Second amendment jurisprudence is a farce – nothing but a bunch of words and pseudo-logic to justify the use of deadly force against the public.
brolin1911a1 says:
I suspect that the couple who were almost car-jacked in St. Louis last week would disagree. When I last heard, their two would-be carjackers were in critical and unstable condition after being shot by the male intended victim. That man and his girlfriend derived quite a bit of good from gun ownership.
That brings up another valid comparison you made regarding major metropolitan areas with exceptionally high crime rates in otherwise gun-friendly states. St. Louis is one such city with one of the highest crime rates in the country yet, at least in theory, is a city where CCW permits are easy to obtain. According to the latest numbers I’ve seen, though, there are fewer than 12,000 CCW permits issued out of 2.8 million people or about 0.43% of the population . That contrasts with 945 such permits issued in my home county of 33,000 people or 2.9%, a rate roughly 6.7 times greater. Not only must one recognize and ask why the crime rate is higher in that city but also why the percentage of citizens availing themselves of legal CCW is so much lower.
One obvious but studiously ignored factor is demographics. St. Louis has a high minority population, roughly 53% Black and Hispanic combined. Estimates run as high as one out of four Black males in the city have felony convictions which would preclude any legal CCW for them. In contrast, my own county has a vanishingly small minority population and they tend, by and large, to be associated with the university or employed as engineers, technicians or management in local businesses. Those whom I have the pleasure of knowing personally also have obtained their own CCW permits. One is even a certified 4H firearms instructor.
What I am saying is that the factor in the cities you mention may not be the presence of firearms but rather the presence of a large segment of the population with a culture of thuggery. I know that is a factor in Memphis, as well. Some personal friends of mine made the acquaintance of Memphis gang members when said urbanites came north with the thought of looting Missouri bootheel towns following a series of tornadoes a few years ago. The thugs quickly returned to their city when it was made plain that those rural “hicks” not only had guns but were capable and willing to use them as more than status symbols. There was no looting. Again, guns were a definite benefit to society.
July 6, 2010, 1:21 pmTim Starr says:
Nordyke’s about more than just gun shows at the county fairgrounds. The law was upheld on the grounds that all county-owned property constituted a “sensitive area.” What’s the basis for that claim? So, if a county owns a dump, a park, or a wastewater treatment plant, that area’s so “sensitive” that average citizens can’t be trusted to have guns there?
July 6, 2010, 2:16 pmTim Starr says:
No, it doesn’t, unless you are going to claim that there are few relevant demographic differences between Memphis and NYC, which claim wouldn’t be taken seriously by any competent criminologist. What would be relevant is the crime rates in Memphis before & after passage of Tennessee’s right-to-carry law. Did they go up, or down? Down, clearly, else you hoplophobes would be trumpeting it to the heavens. Meanwhile, what happened to the crime rates of places like DC or Chicago after they banned handguns? Crime skyrocketed.
July 6, 2010, 2:22 pmKharn says:
RonNYC:
July 6, 2010, 2:48 pmI was just in Times Square, Harlem and the Bronx (made a wrong turn in Harlem, crossed the bridge and did not want to stop to decypher the map until I thought it was safe) yesterday, being lost in NYC made me really, really miss my .45 and AR15. Sure, 999 times out of 1000 I wouldn’t have needed them, but it only takes one time to change your life forever.
cboldt says:
– Nordyke’s about more than just gun shows at the county fairgrounds. The law was upheld on the grounds that all county-owned property constituted a “sensitive area.” What’s the basis for that claim? –
July 6, 2010, 3:14 pmThe stated basis is exactly this: “open, public spaces the County’s Ordinance covers fit comfortably within the same category as schools and government buildings.”
I think that is nonsense. But, I also don’t think the United States Supreme Court will so put off by this, that it would grant cert.
cboldt says:
July 6, 2010, 3:18 pmKharn says:
cboldt:
They don’t have to actually hear the case, GVR would cover the situation without fuss. It is also important to not