This is an incorrect reading of the Second Amendment- there are many weapons that are not legal to acquire, or require various legal hoops to jump through, that don’t violate the constitution. Expanding background checks (which are already required for many gun sales) or limiting magazine size does not violate the second amendment. Banning handguns (as some cities have tried) does, and those bans have been struck down.
“shall not be infringed” does not mean no laws and regulations about guns/weapons, as the supreme court (including Scalia) has noted time and time again.
The right of the people to bear arms shall not be infringed. However, the courts have upheld reasonable regulations and it seems to me that the Colorado laws fell within the reasonable standards set by the Heller decision.
I do think that as a general rule legislatures should stop messing with gun rights. Not because the proposed regulations are unconstitutional, because our side has won that battle so thoroughly that the regulations actually proposed are pretty small bore stuff these days. But mainly because gun control just doesn’t do any good except to provide a nuisance for law abiding citizens.
Anyway, in Colorado I’m happy with the result, but upon further reflection I’d rather not recalls be used in this way. If the law had been blatantly unconstitutional, then I could see supporting the recalls.
I wouldn’t say that. As far as the governor’s recall went, there were many liberals who despise what Walker did but did not believe that a recall was the appropriate mechanism for dealing with it. He will surely not be re-elected with this scar on his record. Ditto for the legislators and senators that survived their recalls. In the WI case, the problem was not with any manufactured outrage over constitutionality, nor was it funded by an incredibly wealthy lobbying group. The problem was the dirty underhanded way that the law was ramrodded through the legislature and how Walker justified it by a fiscal “crisis” that he manufactured.
Things like stricter background checks in exactly the sort of thing these lying sack of shit gun nutters always say they want. This recall reveals the truth though, they do whatever their NRA masters tell them, and they will severely punish any politician who so much as proposes any gun regulation.
This is why we shouldn’t listen to gun nuts why they cry about how all they want is reasonable and rational and well thought out gun regs. No, they don’t. They want every psycho whackjob out there to have all the guns they want with no restrictions.
I find myself in the rare position of agreeing with adaher. What the Dems did in Wisconsin was stupid and counterproductive. IMO we shouldn’t be trying to remove people from office in mid-term because they voted in ways we don’t like. We should be taking notes and educating the public so they will toss them out in the next regular election.
I thought the Dems here set a terrible precedent and I can see it happening all across the nation in the future, fragmenting an already too-fragmented government into total gridlock.
Which is a victory for Republicans who generally prefer government to be crippled and powerless anyway.
I often compare the gun issue to the abortion issue. Two completely different issues but with similar political dynamics. Pro-choice advocates, like 2nd amendment advocates, say they favor regulations, but when regulations are actually proposed, they fight them. Not so much because they hate the regulations themselves, but because they don’t trust the lawmakers.
The issues also have a similarity today because each has a court decision upholding them as a right, but leaving open some room for regulations. But once something is regarded as a right, those who defend that right will tend to be very skeptical and hostile to even reasonable regulations.
First of all, the NRA didn’t do a blessed thing until AFTER Bloomberg made his contribution. The beginning steps of both recalls were entirely grass-roots efforts. It wasn’t until Democratic money began flooding in from out of state that conservative out-of-state groups began to get involved.
Secondly, even though this doesn’t change Democratic control, it changes things quite a bit by making that control much more tenuous. As recent events have shown, some state Democrats are relatively conservative. This means that the state party is going to have to moderate some of its bills in the next legislative session, or risk defections that they simply cannot afford.
In the case of pro-choicers, it IS because of the regulations themselves. The anti-abortion regulations are designed to close abortion clinics or otherwise make it much more difficult to get an abortion. Want to make it so an abortion clinic has an MD on staff? Fine. Want to make it so an MD has to fucking watch someone take a fucking pill? Take a long walk on a short pier.
So how does a 15-round-magazine limit infringe any gun right at all? You want to go down to the range and make holes in pieces of paper or tin cans, you can still do that. Hunting? If 15 shots between reloading isn’t enough for you to take down a deer, you’re a really piss-poor hunter. Self-defense? Likewise-- If 15 shots doesn’t stop an attacker, then the next 15 won’t, either. Is there any gun user at all besides a mass murderer who’s going to be affected by a law like this?
And what’s wrong with background checks for ALL gun sales? If background checks are acceptable at all (and I assume they are; they’re one of the ways pro-gun people reassure the rest of us as to the safety of guns), then why shouldn’t they be acceptable for all sales?
I’ve already addressed the point about the NRA. For the rest of it, what we want is the current laws prohibiting “psycho whackjobs” from owning guns to actually be properly enforced.
Idiotic things like limiting magazine size have nothing to do with stopping crime or anything like that. You can find videos showing how trivially easy it is to change out a magazine.
Speaking in general terms, one of our biggest beefs with liberals is that they time and time again insist on focusing on changes or additions to gun laws that have little or nothing to do with the actual problems. For example, the news lately has been talking about the Obama administration’s decision to ban the re-importation of M-1 rifles that had been sent to other countries. You would be hard-pressed to find any crime anywhere at any time that has been committed with an M-1. But all too often, liberals have one, and often both, of these attitudes:
(1) It’s so, so scary-looking; we must ban it!
(2) My mind is made up–don’t bother me with the facts.
If I own a gun, and want to sell it to my neighbor, or give it to my nephew, there doesn’t seem to be a good way in place to conduct a background check that doesn’t cost me money.
In discussing the background check requirement for a business, there’s an economy of scale involved; they’ll do hundreds of checks per week.
I will do one per couple of years.
So the argument is that most proposals requiring universal background checks for sales between private citizens substantially burdens the right to sell your property.
But if you’re not persuaded, then I urge you to call your state reps and get them to fight the good fight! Colorado legislators’ brave sacrifices of their jobs should not be allowed to stand alone. Other brave Democrats should also lose their jobs!
Particularly because, in general, the parties proposing the reasonable regulations (of both gun rights and abortion rights) have the long-term desire to remove the right entirely. In which case the skepticism is well-founded.
If you want to give it to your nephew, how is a law that requires a background check on a sale relevant to you? You’re not selling it.
And if you’re selling it to your neighbor, what’s wrong with it costing you money? It’s a monetary transaction. You’d also need to pay sales tax on it, too. Is that also a problem?
And how can you possibly enforce the laws if a psycho whackjob is allowed to buy a gun without anyone being able to find out if he’s a psycho whackjob?
You haven’t addressed diddly. The NRA’s power isn’t just about brute force spending, it’s about their huge activist membership that votes lock-step against any and all gun regulation, while disingenuously claiming things like, “we just want current laws enforced” which anyone who has taken more than five minutes to educate themselves on the issue would know is ridiculous because the NRA and its auto-voters will defeat or cripple or de-fund any attempt at “enforcement of current laws.”
That’s a strawman. The main issue is background checks and voting against all gun regulation, not magazine size.
I’ve already addressed this. It’s all the same: “we just want thoughtful laws,” or “we just want current laws enforced first.” Sorry, it’s time for everyone to recognize that isn’t the intention at all.