A Question for Gun Owners

Great Debates
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On the topic of individual rights versus militia rights, would anyone like to tackle Madison’s submitted draft of the amendment, quoted on the first page? Or respond to the assertion that the phrase “keep and bear arms” was commonly used back then in an exclusively military sense? Alternatively, if the amendment was intended to apply to all able-bodied citizens because all able-bodied citizens were part of the militia (an argument I think you’re making, Mr. Zambezi), is it possible that the purpose of the amendment was to stimulate membership in those militias–since most able-bodied citizens weren’t members of militias, even during the Revolution, and legislation such as the Militia Act had already been passed to try and correct that fact?

Daniel: In fact, I am reading the posts. I’m sorry if my answers aren’t comprehensive enough for you.

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Glitch: You know more about this than I, but wouldn’t universal registration help ensure that criminals are caught? What detriment would it be to (sorry, Lib) peaceful, honest gun owners, aside from the inconvenience of filling out yet another government form?

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Danielinthewolvesden wrote:

I agree with all this, except for the “ask for a reason” part. Isn’t the reason obvious? You want to carry concealed so that you can defend yourself should unforeseen circumstances arise. You shouldn’t have to justify “why” you want a concealed carry permit any more than you have to justify “why” you want a driver’s license.

In the case of automobiles, registration’s purpose is to ensure that all the appropriate taxes are paid. If autos weren’t being taxed and then, next year, suddenly all autos were taxed, all previously unregistered autos would have to be registered. (Heck, we even had to retroactively register people when we first imposed the Social Security system.)

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Gadarene: To answer that question I need to layout a basic assumptions of what we are talking about. I assume that by registration we are assuming a test bullet be fired from my pistol and its characteristics are stored in some local/national database so that a bullet recovered from a crime scene can be matched back to my gun.

First, the are the physical problems. The exact firing characteristics of my gun will change over time, so a test bullet may not come back as a very precise match years later.

Second, there are “reasonable doubt” issues. The matching of the bullet to my gun makes me a suspect but nothing more. My gun could have been stolen, or there is the possibility that somebody else who had access to it used it to commit the murder (e.g. neighbours, spouse, children).

Granted it does let the police close in on a probable suspect more quickly, and so it is of some use (i.e. they could get to the gun quickly enough perhaps to test for recent firing). However, I do not think it should be viewed as a wonder-solution. There is little doubt that the criminal element would adjust their methods to get around this. Necessity is the mother of invention, and getting around this kind of bullet registration is trivial, but at this time isn’t necessary.

Any decent cop can tell you that the bulk of arrests are made by somebody dropping the dime on the criminal.

Personally, I am not against this kind of registration as long as it doesn’t cost the perspective gun owner anything. Otherwise, we risk the possibility of a legitimate gun owner being refused ownership simply because he cannot afford the testing fees.

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Glitch: Go tke a cousre in forensic ballistics. Or talk to
an expert in the field. Your idea of a “test bullet” is ridiculous. It would be useless, & expensive. Of almost as much use would be the idea of taking casts/prints of tires when they are sold, so you can spot a car later if it is used in a crime, and leaves tracks. 1. you gotta have tracks (bullets in good shape). 2. The tires cannot be worn (same with barrels), 3 The owner must not have changed tires (ie barrels, something you can do pretty easily on most guns, not as easily as tires, true). 4. The tracks from all of a particular model with the same tire would look just about identical (same with guns–it is the WEAR which makes them distinc, just like tires). See how ridiculous that idea is? A bullet from a brand-new gun would tell you NADA. Also the test bullet would have to be the same type of bullet as the crook used, and for all the popular calibers, there are HUNDREDS of choices “it won’t come up as a very precise match” - no, it WON’T match even within 10% (that’s only a few hundred thousand to a million) Hell, saying that “it was a black guy”, and rounding up every black guy in the USA is about the same %.

Look, no, I repeat NO, Law enforcement agency in the USA wants or has asked for this, including the notoriously anti-gun BATF. Hell, they don’t even do it for the few machine guns which are licemsed out there, why would they want to do it for millions & millions of other guns?

Oh, and it won’t work at all for shotguns, and you can fire buckshot from handguns, too.

So, can you come up with ANY way registration would prevent crime?

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Daniel: Ummm … did you actually “read” my post? Allow me to present a two choice quotes.

Next…

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Read it? I quoted it. “may not come back as a very precise match”—WRONG–. better: will not come back with a match that is the slightest bit useful to law enforcement.

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This has been one of the most informative threads I have ever read on the SDMB, especially in GD.
Dan…I actually agree with you for once! I find your logic and reasoning sound and impressive.
But all of you are bringing up good points.

Just wanted to send out a happy vibe! =)

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Well then perhaps you need to learn to read more carefully. Quite obviously my post is not FOR registration, so how you are coming to that conclusion is beyond me.

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Also, if your so-called point is that one point in my post could have been improved on you might have tried stating THAT instead of displaying a lack of comprehension skills in implying that I found the concept of bullet registration useful. In a best case scenario it COULD be (note, could it is a rather important word), but has too many problems to be generally useful even IF (note, if also a rather important word) the bullet were to come back with a match. If you had of stated that instead of this ridiculous attack then I would have agreed with you that the chance of a match was slim. I wasn’t looking at the problem from that perspective but from another perspective.

sigh

Anyway, back to Gadarene’s question for me. There is another problem with bullet registration that perhaps should be listed.

Because the forensic match is going to result in multiple matches, really what the police will have is multiple possible suspects. Now, lets assume that the match returns suspects #1 to #8. The police do some interviews and latch on the the ex-boyfriend, suspect #3. Or better still let’s say that they already had an idea it might have been suspect #3. This represents a large legal problem for the prosecution. The defense will argue that the police did not agressively pursue other suspects and in fact had 7 other probable suspects! It could have been any of the other 7. The testifying officer will say “Well, none of the other 7 had a motive”, and the defense lawyer will say “How would you know, you didn’t investigate THEM!”. It is a big problem in law enforcement currently, and this would only make it worse. Also, if you are thinking the obvious … it would be impossible with the current police workforce to agressively pursie all 8 suspects and rule out the other 7.

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Gadarene: show me a quote from one of the Framer’s, or better yet, a supreme court case which clearly shows that the intent was to give the right to bear arms only to members of a militia.

Were it the case that the constitution was intended in the manner you suggest, don’t you suppose that someone over the last 200 years would have imposed this?

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Mr. Zambezi:

James Madison qualifies as a Framer, doesn’t he? In fact, he’s the Framer, as far as the Second Amendment goes. So are you going to address his submitted draft of the Amendment?

And as for the Supreme Court, I give you United States v. Miller (1939), which states pretty plainly that

It goes on to address original intent in some depth, saying in part

Now, obviously the popular interpretation of the amendment has changed in recent years (in fact, the Second Amendment used to be a pretty obscure part of the Bill of Rights, until about fifty years ago), but since y’all like to invoke the Framers when arguing private gun rights…

That good enough for you, spanky? :slight_smile:

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Glitch: thanks for the information. I guess I’ll confess my ignorance again, though: you were talking primarily about bullet registration. Isn’t there a difference between that and registration of weapons? For example, a national database of the serial number and registered owner of each legally bought firearm–would that be feasible, conscionable, and/or effective?

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GAD: I believe both Glitch & I have shown that there would be no benefit in reducing crime by any sort of national database of Gun Owners. There would be ONE use, of course, when it came time to confiscate guns, they would have a list already. And they just did this in Australia, so it CAN happen here.

Glitch, I am sorry if I did not fully understand your postings. They read to me like you thought that registration, athough of DOUBTFUL use, was still of some use. To take your very nice example, and put it in proper context; Instead of matches 1-8, they have potential matches 1- 357,976. And then we find out that the actual culprit had changed barrels years ago, and he isn’t even amoung them. Now, if the police HAVE a suspect, and have probable cause, and they seach and find a gun, then they can show pretty clearly whether or not hat gun was used in the crime, assuming the crime is recent. Because they will fire an IDENTICAL type of bullet out of a gun barrel that has not changed it’s wear pattern, and hopefully HAS a wear pattern. See, its the wear pattern that makes the bullets in ant way distinct.

And, again, GAD, I hate to be repetitive, but to Madison, et al, every able bodied gun-owning male WAS a member of the “Militia”, thus it is a tautology

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And I hate to be repetitive, Dan, but while every able-bodied male was a militia member in theory, in reality very few were. That’s what the Milita Act was set up to address, and it didn’t. You can’t have it both ways–if you cede that the amendment was meant to refer to members of militias (as would seem to be the case, with Madison’s submitted draft, the established meaning of the amendment’s language, and the relevant text in the Articles of Confederation), then you’ve acknowledged that the investiture of arms would only be applied to those active milita members, not just citizens who happened to be eligible.

I’d suggest again that perhaps the amendment, like the Milita Act, was intended to institutionalize the importance of militias, in order to increase the participation of able-bodied males.

Seems like we’re going round and round on this one…:smiley:

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Okay, Dan. I’m Tom Cruise, you’re Jack Nicholson. Ready?

If the 2nd Amendment protects your right to own a gun, then why do you believe registration will result in it being taken from you?

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sqweels! You’re Tom Cruise? I had no idea.

Hey, you were great in that movie. The one where you played the jewel thief. (Sorry, gratuitous Being John Malkovich ref. Won’t happen again.)

Good question, though.

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GAD: There is a difference between being a member of A Militia, and being a member of THE Militia. See, the Militia Act, and Common Law at that time, defined every ablebodied gunowner as being in THE Militia. In other words, if the Redcoats cme, you were supposed to assemble & go out a shoot a few (which did happen, and was the main source of our earliest “victories”). But, if you were a member of A Militia, ie had a uniform, was drilled, had a standard calibre. etc, you were a much more valuable asset. So, yes, in a way the Militia Act was enacted to encourage men(THE Militia) to belong to A Milita, as it pointed out you had to show up & fight anyway, so you might as well have a snappy uniform. Remember, that the Feds had no real army, and there was nothing like the National Guard (once, perhaps A Militia, but now just a part of the Federal Armed Services). There were State, City and civic org Militias, ( imagine the local Mason Lodge having a small unit. During the early years of most Fraternal orgs, they WERE Militias, some of the remnants like swords continue to this day). Also there were PRIVATE Militias, where some rich landowner would provide uniforms for all his buddies & employeees so he could be a Captain or major, or something.

And we laff at the idea of “THE Militia” being of any use in modern warfare, but it is not as funny as you think. During WWII, the Japanese navy considered landing small groups of naval commandoes, who would place charges & blow up things like oil refineries. They correctly figured that our Military organization here on the West coast was disorganized & inadequate. However, early on, it was pointed out that just gun-totin americans could defeat such a force (I can just imagine the vision that went on the the High Commands mind, primed by years of gangster & western movies-- of men in 10 gallon hats & six shooters, side-by-side with dudes in pinstriped suits & tommyguns, sniping away at their valient but outnumbered landing party :smiley: ). The sad thing was, that such a plan might well have succeeded, if there had been ONLY the Us Army to protect us. (Ever see “1941”?)

Is it not possible that the same thought crossed the mind of some terrorist groups, even recently?

So, yes, the 2nd applied to THE Militia, which = the Armed Public, but also they wanted more of THE Militia to get into A militia. We no longer have (any) "A militia"s (to speak of, there are a few still around, mostly as a way to give out honorary Colonelships), but we still have “THE Militia”. To this day, any sheriff can deputize you into the “posse”, a hangover, fromt he old days of militias.

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Oh, and GAD, if the 2nd only applied to members of “A Militia”, the Supremes (in that sawed-off shotgun case you quote) would have simply pointed out that the arrestee was not a Member of “A Miliia”, and thus that would have been that. Instead they pointed out that a sawed-off shotgun is not a proper weapon for “THE Milita”(Caps mine), and thus the 2nd admendment did not apply. I suppose the same arguement could be given for “Saturday nite Specials”, but how it would aplly to “Assault Weapons” is beyond me.

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A history of the militia in America: http://www.militia-watchdog.org/faq3.htm

The militia today: http://www.militia-watchdog.org/faq4.htm NOTE: This second article focuses primarily on the the arguments raised by private groups that call themselves “militias” such as the Montana Freemen, rather than on the relation of militia to the 2nd amendment. It does, however, state that membership in the real militia confers no rights, only responsibilities.