It’s right there in the part you quoted…“the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed”. Keep AND bear.
Ok, so the plan is that you are going to grandfather in all of the existing guns, and this would only apply to new guns? Is that a good summary? Or are you going to make existing gun owners jump through hoops to prove ‘they are capable and committed to safe and responsible gun use’.
Assuming it’s the former, you aren’t going to really solve anything unless you put in place some draconian measures to ensure that no one can trade, sell or give away their guns to anyone else. If you don’t put something like that in an iron fisted enforcement regime then basically you will have over 300 million guns in circulation, and people will simply not buy new ones but instead sell or trade or give away the old ones. There are more guns than there are US citizens, and certainly, more than there are gun owners. If you are planning to do the later, then rational people will rightfully see this as a variation of the government coming to take their guns, yes.
If it’s the former the plan will take a lot longer than a few decades and I don’t see what it achieves to be honest.
Pick a position and commit to it. Are you saying people should obey the law or are you saying it’s okay for people to break any laws they don’t agree with?
If you believe people should obey the law, then police officers should go out and do their job even when it means enforcing laws they don’t agree with.
And if you believe people should be free to ignore laws they don’t agree with, stop complaining about how “gun grabbers” are ignoring the Second Amendment. They’re just doing what you said they should do.
It’s a bit more complex than you’d apparently like it to be. As a general rule, civil society works a lot better if people obey the laws. Humans being what they are, everyone has their own line(s) in the sand, things that, if the government tries to go too far, they’ll say “fuck it” and start breaking the law in various ways. For an example, we recently had a thread that asked Dopers if they’d hide illegal immigrants in violation of the law.
Our own Declaration of Independence says:
What’s the line between “light and transient causes” / sufferable evils and “a long train of abuses and usurpations” / “absolute despotism”? It’s hard to say definitively, and answers will vary. For some people, we’ve already crossed the line, and they’ll engage in civil disobedience of various sorts, or punch “fascists”, or hide DACA participants in their attic, or crash a plane into an IRS building, or shoot up a charity baseball practice. For the rest of us, we’re still generally in “suffer, while evils are sufferable” mode.
Except that military budget it there to fund, you know, military stuff. It’s not just a huge pile of cash lying around what whatever non-military things you’d like to do.
So if one were to manufacture a nuclear device they can carry or fit in a backpack, you believe they have a constitutional right to keep and bear it?
An automatic AR-15 is hand-held. It is also illegal. It’s almost as if the government took away your “right” to own those, as it did with missles and artillery. And pointing out the fallacy regarding nuclear missles and artillery as arms doesnt refute the fact that many hand-held weapons are already banned.
What’s the line between life and death? And even when a shooting victim survives, how much of the victim’s liberty and ability to pursue happiness will have been functionally be removed by permanent effects of the bullets’ paths through that person’s body?
And how do the rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness - unalienable, according to TJ - stack up against the right to bear arms? Seems that if they’re really unalienable, they ought to trump other rights when they come into conflict. And at the very least, there ought to be some balancing test between those three unalienable rights that practically all of us want to continue to exercise, and the right to bear arms. Seems to me like if the unalienable rights are anything near unalienable, the right to bear arms can’t and shouldn’t be an unlimited right.
“We can conclude from the information in this review that individuals with mental illness, when appropriately treated, do not pose any increased risk of violence over the general population. Violence may be more of an issue in patients diagnosed with personality disorders and substance dependence. The overall impact of mental illness as a factor in the violence that occurs in society as a whole appears to be overemphasized, possibly intensifying the stigma already surrounding psychiatric disorders. Violence and mental illness are not without connection, however, as they share many biologic and psychosocial aspects.”
There are too many good quotes in the psych today article
And for how storing your guns at an armory doesn’t violate your right, I don’t recall anything dictating where arms are to be kept, and when yhou can bear them.
As I said in an earlier post when you brought this up, ‘keep and bear’ pretty much states that they can keep them (not have them kept) and bear them. Now, we’ve regulated the bear part, but we’ve also got regulations on the keep part. You can keep a firearm in your house and in your car, though there are restrictions on the car part since you can’t drive your car with your firearm onto, say, Native American Reservation territory without their express permission, or a school, or a Federal facility. But what you are saying is that you are going to take these weapons away and ‘keep’ them for the owners while heavily restricting their access to them…and that goes way beyond what’s stated or implied in the amendment in question or the Constitution. It would be like saying I’m going to take all your books and ability to write anything for public dissemination, but you can come to the library to look at them or write things on our computers using our internet (if you can demonstrate your competence to do so to our satisfaction). Would you say that this would heavily infringe if not violate your right to free speech if they did this? Because this is what you are doing with the guns in your plan, basically.
What is the difference in deterrent between a beware of dog sign and having a firearm the intruder doesn’t know about. Only one on those things actually reduces the risk of home invasion in the first place. My point isn’t that the beware of dog sign will protect you from all the straw people in your neighborhood, but why would a criminal pick the brightly lit house with a beware of dog sign when you’re neighbor’s house is an easier target. What are all these armed straw intruders invading your home for anyways?
And I already explained the problem with muggings. Any competent self defense teacher will tell you that the best way to defend your life is to hand over your crap. What the hell are you carrying around thasts so valuable to these straw people anyways?!
Either way, in the very very very very unlikely event that a random home invader enters my home with a weapon while I’m home I would assess the situation and react accordingly. If my tazerwas close(which it never is) I would grab that, however I also have fists, remotes, and plenty of other crap lying around to fuck him up with. Yeah, fun fact, humans were pretty efficient at fucking each other up before guns where largely available, and fucking people up is like riding a bike. Of course, if the person was armed, i would probably try to avoid a fight altogether, seeing as I don’t have a gun and wouldn’t keep it close if I did.
IANAL, but even in Heller, the minority opinion argued that the second amendment right should be held to a narrower reading, stating that one should only exercise their rights in support of a militia. If you hold that narrow view (and Heller did not), how do you square that with the fact that you are allowing the government to hold and control your arms - the very state that you are in theory bearing your arms to protect against?
Nobody would be taking any guns. New ones would be required to be stored at the armory. Old ones would remain as long as the owners maintain them. Existing guns could follow current gun laws.
Also, I am not saying anybody keep the guns for the citizens. I am saying the citizens should be required to keep their guns in a secure, regulated location, and that guns and ammunition should be very tightly *regulated[/], not restricted. If you want to use your gun for a legal purpose, go for it. Other developed countries get along just fine without guns, and with the number of firearms available it would be a long time before anybody in this country who wants to be armed at all times is not able. This plan is the definition of compromise. If gun crime rapidly increases as the availability of guns decreases, then obviously the NRA was right the whole time and the regulations can be loosened. I strongly doubt this is the case, however.
And the very clear and obvious difference is that books don’t use explosions to hurl dense ideas faster than the speed of sound. What a laughable simile.
Then I don’t see how it would accomplish much of anything, certainly not within a decade or two. Perhaps in a few centuries, it would bear some fruit, but personally, I think we’ll be over this issue by that point anyway so seems like a bit of a waste.
You are mixing a lot of stuff here. First off, I don’t really care what other countries do or don’t do…I live here. So, tossing that out, I’m unsure how you think this will do anything here. If only new guns are affected, what makes you think anyone is going to buy a gun only to have to ‘keep their guns in a secure, regulated location, and that guns and ammunition should be very tightly *regulated[/]’? For all intents and purposes they paid for a gun that has to be kept and used at some government regulated facility, or checked in and checked out, plus you already said they have to demonstrate competence to do any of this based on some rule set that is undetermined. Why would anyone go through that? Especially since there are already hundreds of millions of guns out there today…and you can bet that in anticipation of your great plan here there would be a huge buy up of new guns by hoarders, speculators and just folks worried about your plan. We got something like this when Obama was elected president, and he really didn’t do anything…you are planning to do a lot, so you have to figure the buying frenzy would be even more. That could push the number of guns up to half a billion or more.
And if it’s your thought that the guns would gradually go out of service, consider that guns from the civil war era or even before are still in use today. Guns from WWI, WWII, and closer in time are used fairly often today. The vast majority of those hundreds of millions of guns would be around for centuries in your scenario since it would behoove folks to maintain them and gunsmiths to be available to keep them in repair.
I’m unsure why you are amused, but both are rights, so the analogy is similar. To YOU it might be a distinction, but a book like Mien Kampf or The Communist Manifesto sure killed a lot of people. Hell, even the Holy Bible and Koran has a pretty big body count. So, rather than snickering you might want to think about it first.
Thanks for the cite, but what I wanted was
[ul][li]a cite showing that mental health therapists can accurately predict who will be violent in the general population [/li][li]a cite showing that therapy reduces violence when required for the general public, [/ul][/li]And this part
seems to argue against your point - mental illness in the general populace is overstated as a cause of violence.
Your OP said this -
I assumed the reference to “all firearms” and “all times” meant all firearms and all times.
And this part -
certainly sounded like limitations on the right to keep and bear arms, albeit limits that are phased in gradually.
Now it appears you are suggesting something more like a library for guns, except instead of a library card you get mental health treatment.
Is participation in this lending library for guns voluntary? If “operating an illegal armory” is against the law, it doesn’t sound like it is.
It sounds like the OP would grandfather in the existing guns, so it would only be new purchases that would have to go into the library (ironic considering the OP doesn’t see the analogy :p).
Maybe I wasn’t clear but the people in the community would have control of the armories, which could be privately or collectively run. The government would just assist in regulation and enforcement.
I don’t understand how most regulation of firearms is viewed as government control in a bad sense. Plenty of industries are regulated for the benefit of society.
Besides, our society already has laws that restrict the use and possession of firearms. People who like guns follow those laws, and the people who don’t want to bother aren’t any worse off. Some criminals will never follow the law, so there is no point in gathering the straw to create them. My idea would allow people who like guns(not the fantasy of killing bad guys) to possess and use them in a way that provides a net benefit to society.
Have you read Heller? Everything you’ve posted thus far is so at odds with current jurisprudence it seems like you haven’t.
It’s challenging to have a debate grounded in reality if the suggestions are so far fetched it would take the largest rube goldberg machine to see how they’d play out. The chance of laser eyed sharks riding on the back of flying unicorns visiting my house to do my taxes is less likely to occur than your scenario, but only just by a little bit.
You do understand that the government already regulates gun ownership and use in the US today, yes? What you are talking about is a whole other level of ‘regulation’ though. On the one hand, existing guns would just be what they are today. On the other hand, new guns would be required to go into your proposed armory and have pretty restricted access and use. Whether it’s the government doing it or private industry, it’s going to limit what and how you can access your property. Since you were amused with the book analogy, let’s talk cars. True, driving your car isn’t a protected right so actually is not as good an analogy, but you are saying the equivalent of if you have an existing car you can drive it as you like, but any new cars you have to park them in our facility and can only drive them on our track, or if you can jump through the right hoops we might let you check them out for a limited drive in approved areas, but of course you need to bring them back when you are done. Oh, and pay for you to get that evaluation and probably to keep it up to date.
BTW, this brings up something…who is paying for your armory facility and all of the logistics to support it? Are the owners on the hook for the privilege of the use, or is the government on the hook? You mentioned private companies doing it, so who pays them?
I don’t intend to show that mental health is a benefit for gun owners any more than it is for regular society. I just believe the right to individual safety is not at important as the right to collective safety, therefore people who want to use guns safely and legally should receive mandated mental healthcare for the safety of the community. See my cite indicating better healthcare reduces crime overall. What indicates that this doesn’t hold true for gun owners?