a) I don’t think we should find it necessary to quarter soldiers. A simple shot to the head seems much simpler. Drawing and quartering is so 15th century.
b) My feelings on the whole 2nd Amendment issue vary depending on my mood. Sometimes I think the quickest way to world peace would be to issue every person over the age of 8 their own thermonuclear warhead with EZ-fire detonator attached. Other times I’m more inclined to think that I’d never see the next sunrise.
The 2nd Amendment is apparently not currently interpreted to mean that individuals can own any firepower that they wish to own, even if that was the original effect in the 1700s; and the types of weaponry permitted to US Citizens in no way protects them from being overwhelmed by our own military forces, were it ever to come to that, nor would they be of much use in repelling invaders from yon foreign lands if our military were slow to ride to the rescue.
If the modern purpose of the 2nd Amendment is to allow people hunting equipment for recreational and subsistence hunting, some of the firearms legally sold would seem to be outside of that purview; if the modern purpose of the 2nd Amendment is to allow people to possess defensive weaponry to protect hearth and home against burglars, drug dealers, and pushy insurance salesfolk, the law’s current interpretations seem more appropriate.
Meanwhile, to take away ANY right, there should be a compelling reason. It is a bad thing to go around curtailing citizens’ rights for no reason other than “I fail to see a reason why you’d need to own one of those”. The typical reason given for wanting to curtail 2nd Amendment rights is that widespread firearm possession had led to a trigger-happy society with lots of gun violence and gun deaths. Some people making this argument would like to eliminate certain specific firearms from the list of legally obtainable weapons, while leaving other models alone; others making the argument would like to restrict firearm possession to only certain qualified people, either by creating new categories of folks who aren’t allowed to buy own them or by creating new categories of folks OUTSIDE of which no one can buy or own them. I think all such people should rent Michael Moore’s Bowling for Columbine and watch it until the message sinks in. Yeah, Michael freaking MOORE says that gun ownership on a similar scale elsewhere (e.g. Canada) has not caused a parallel gun violence problem, ergo the cause of gun violence in the US is not the existence & availability of firearms. Mmkay?
What do I think, really? I think to own a firearm you should have to take a firearms safety course, such as the ones offered by the NRA, and take & pass a test afterwards. I think firearms should be registered. I think the so-called “shall issue” standard should apply for all who do so (if you take the course and pass the test, you GET to obtain a license, not subject to any other review). If they can find a way to “fingerprint” ammunition itself, and record all ammo sales, without making the ammo unsafe or discernably more expensive, I’m amendable to laws phasing in a requirment for such tags on all ammo. I’m not at all convinced that trying to make it difficult to obtain guns legally is ever going to have more than a very tiny effect on gun violence, and whatever effect it does have could only happen at the expense of also affecting a lot of law-abiding people and that’s not a very good trade-off.
