Emotional about gun control? Please read

[Skidoo]

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Let's say I'm a 23 year old who wants to buy a book to enlighten his family. I could easily pass a criminal background check and a drug test. I walk into a book shop and want to buy a book, lets say a libertarian classic. What resistance am I likely to encounter? I kind of figured pending a background check and a 5 day waiting period I'd get my book(s). Now, what I can't figure out is why free speech activists would have a serious problem with this. My ability to buy a book was not really impeded upon. The fact that there are more books than cars in this Country is telling me that they are not that hard to get. Also, why would free speech activists be against a police database profiling the readers of politically subversive books. So maybe it's inefficient and not as effective as people who watch CSI would like to think. Why is this an issue pro-liberty folks would pick to fight? As long as they are reading their books for legal purposes, they should have nothing to worry about. Why care if your books' titles is in a database? Fighting something like this just makes pro-liberty folks look like criminals. I just don't understand why people treat book control as all or nothing issue.

Is allowing anyone, to buy any book they want, at any time, really the issue here? Can't the government regulate and monitor the sale and readership of books in this country while doing very little to impede the ability of law-abiding citizens to buy books? To me it looks like that's what the pro-liberty folks are lobbying against, and I can't for the life of me figure out why!

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FYP

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Well done.

[nef]

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Yes to your first question, with the exception that criminals may be prohibited with due process.

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Just curious, do criminals not have the right to defend themselves in their homes from armed intruders? Where in the Second Amendment does it restrict the ownership of arms to non-criminals? [img]/images/graemlins/wink.gif[/img]

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To me this is an interesting part of the debate, because it is important where you draw the line between prohibited persons and those with full rights.

To answer your specific questions, IMO yes they do have the right, and shall not be infringed means all free persons should not be prohibited. Obviously our criminal justice system leaves a lot to be desired wrt this viewpoint.

Guns are already widely available to criminals and I don't think gun control laws have much effect on crime. As far as I am concerned the debate about the social costs of firearms ownership vs. the benefits for self-preservation and the preservation of liberty was settled over 200 years ago during the framing of the Constitution. That was kinda the point of the Bill of Rights.

However, if the main GC laws were some sort of BG check and maybe the NFA without fear of further encroachments I would focus my political activism efforts in other areas.

[wacki]

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To answer your specific questions, IMO yes they do have the right, and shall not be infringed means all free persons should not be prohibited.

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What about someone with a history of violent crime? I know that you aren't going to stop a felon from getting a gun. It's an impossible feat. But would you actually defend a convicted armed robber's ability to legally acquire weapons after he finished 8 years of jail + probation?

[elwoodblues]

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What about someone with a history of violent crime? I know that you aren't going to stop a felon from getting a gun. It's an impossible feat. But would you actually defend a convicted armed robber's ability to legally acquire weapons after he finished 8 years of jail + probation

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I don't mean to sidetrack the discussion too much here, but my purpose for asking the original question was twofold: 1) to be a smartass and 2) to question the limits of the gun supporters. Gun supporters get all up-in-arms when people read the text of the 2nd Amendment in a way that is at least supportable by the text itself (i.e. that the well-regulated militia clause modifies the right to keep arms), but, generally, have no problem allowing a restriction that is nowhere near the text of the Amendment (prohibiting criminals from legally acquiring firearms.) Even the author of the article seems to have no problem prohibiting criminals from getting legal guns, yet brushes aside interpretations of the text of the second amendment contrary to his own labelling them as "myths."

[MoreWineII]

What do you do if you are someone who thinks the outright banning of guns is misguided but yet are alarmed at the ease in which, for lack of a better word, "scumbags" can get one?

[nef]

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To answer your specific questions, IMO yes they do have the right, and shall not be infringed means all free persons should not be prohibited.

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What about someone with a history of violent crime? I know that you aren't going to stop a felon from getting a gun. It's an impossible feat. But would you actually defend a convicted armed robber's ability to legally acquire weapons after he finished 8 years of jail + probation?

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I think this part of the discussion is purely academic; I don't think we'll ever get to the point where background checks are on the chopping block. I guess I'll flip-flop and say no. I don't think its fair or just to have a permanent loss of rights, including voting rights. However, I guess the most practical way to handle it is the current way. I don't think it would make much sense to challenge the background check without first revamping the criminal justice system.

[elwoodblues]

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What do you do if you are someone who thinks the outright banning of guns is misguided but yet are alarmed at the ease in which, for lack of a better word, "scumbags" can get one?

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I would say that person falls in line with the VAST majority of people.

[nef]

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What about someone with a history of violent crime? I know that you aren't going to stop a felon from getting a gun. It's an impossible feat. But would you actually defend a convicted armed robber's ability to legally acquire weapons after he finished 8 years of jail + probation

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I don't mean to sidetrack the discussion too much here, but my purpose for asking the original question was twofold: 1) to be a smartass and 2) to question the limits of the gun supporters. Gun supporters get all up-in-arms when people read the text of the 2nd Amendment in a way that is at least supportable by the text itself (i.e. that the well-regulated militia clause modifies the right to keep arms), but, generally, have no problem allowing a restriction that is nowhere near the text of the Amendment (prohibiting criminals from legally acquiring firearms.) Even the author of the article seems to have no problem prohibiting criminals from getting legal guns, yet brushes aside interpretations of the text of the second amendment contrary to his own labelling them as "myths."

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Limiting criminal access to firearms is not consistent with the 2nd Amendment but it is consistent with the rest of the Constitution.

Gun rights supporters also brush aside narrow interpretations of the 2nd Amendment because they seem so intellectually dishonest. The “collective rights” argument is especially disgusting coming from the ACLU who reads the Constitution extremely broadly on behalf of individual rights except for the 2nd Amendment. To them the militia means the National Guard, yeah, those guys the Federal Government sent to a foreign land to fight a war. Those are the guys who are supposed to protect us from the Federal Government. This is not a knock on the NG, I am sure they are all fine soldiers, but they do not serve all of the purposes of the militia.

The Supreme Court has already decided that the militia clause modifies the 2nd Amendment. In US v. Miller they decided that only weapons suitable for a militia are protected. So where's my M16? [img]/images/graemlins/grin.gif[/img] They then proceeded to uphold a law with such a high tax on military weapons it was a de facto ban. That case is a [censored] joke; they were like, “Marbury who? Never heard of him!” Then, 55 years later, a federal ban on “assault weapons” passes; the only weapons left that would be useful to the militia are banned.

The 5th circuit has decided that without protected individual ownership of firearms, there is no militia (US v Emerson). The 9th has decided that it is only a “collective” right (Silveira v Lockyer). Maybe the Supreme Court will sort it out, if not we still have plenty of guns.

[Vagos]

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What do you do if you are someone who thinks the outright banning of guns is misguided but yet are alarmed at the ease in which, for lack of a better word, "scumbags" can get one?

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I would say that person falls in line with the VAST majority of people.

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Is this really what most people think? Wow. Isn't it just common sense that unless guns are absolutely banned, the scumbags will always be able to get them?

Marijuana is illegal in this country but potheads still smoke pot. Hence, gun control doesn't do much to keep guns out of the hands of real criminals.
Basically, the position above reads, "I don't want to banish guns completely, but I want to make it difficult for John Q. Citizen to get a gun." Only the criminals and cops will have guns, awesome.

[Koss]

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FYP

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Wow, you just compared GUNS, a device used to KILL OTHER LIVING THINGS, to BOOKS, pieces of paper with words on them. This is the kind of stuff done in the original study posted that makes me want to dismiss the whole argument. How many people are shot in the face by books each year? How many liquor stores get knocked off by people wielding books? I'm not pro big government as much as I'm anti getting shot in the face. I support the idea that the government is here to protect its citizens. Part of that may be to set measures in place to regulate the sale and useage of instruments of death. I'll more than happily acknowledge that current measures may be doing little if any to combat gun crimes, but I don't think that means the gov't should drop all gun-control programs and never look back.

Maybe you want to live in a society where anyone is allowed to buy any gun they want, and carry it wherever they want, but all I see is that creating a very unstable and fearful society.