This is a bit equivocal. You have a right to your life, and I have a right to own a firearm, and these two rights don’t conflict; I have no right to shoot you, after all. At the very least, we can both agree that these two rights exist. What is less clear, at least to me, is that there exists any right to “safety,” where safety is defined as some particular statistical probability of death or injury.
And I don’t know why you put “right” in scare quotes when referring to bearing arms but not to life; last time I checked, only one of those things is a right enumerated in the Constitution.
You’re not addressing the increased risk to life that guns’ *mere existence *poses. We do have laws regarding unreasonable dangerousness of other objects, so why not these?
The right to bear arms is bounded by its very text, the part that the gun fetishists either handwave away or simply pretend doesn’t exist - it’s in fact the only *explicitly *limited right in the Constitution.
Not all quotes are “scare quotes”, btw - the mark is generally used to set off a multi-word term, not necessarily to denigrate it.
Nothing, because we’ve *never *been fine with guns.
I call bullshit. So since the removable-magazine handgun was invented at the end of the nineteenth century, Americans have been pleading for over a century to have these terrible threats banned? That gun control advocates have been crying in the wilderness all that time? If so, it would be one of the best kept secrets of modern history. How about, I don’t know, quotes from the New York Times or Time magazine decades ago on how guns are a terrible threat to us all that must be banned? The sole cite you’ve provided is a poll from the 1950s asking people whether, as a hypothetical, they would like to see handguns banned.
And if you have an answer to the second part of my post above, I’d like to hear it.
You said “We were fine with guns up until maybe the end of the 1960s”, despite the contrary having *already *been demonstrated to you, and you’re calling bullshit?
Either explain and support your claim or drop it. .
This question has been buzzing around in this head of mine and as it is on subject, well here goes. Why aren’t there more angry mothers protesting the death of children in this? If it were something to do with MADD, there would we all kinds of pushing back, do children not matter, are they less important than your guns, has anyone thought what arming the schools mean - prisions, there I said it. What do you call an instution with armed security patroling the grounds, not school. Why cant people who want to have guns, protected by the constitution, have as much respect for then as there car? Get a learners perment, then when profecient with the weapon a license, but you cant own one until you have a license. You must past a sight test, have your picture taken, give information and if you move then the information must be updated, and if there is any history with the police any at all your license is revoked and all arms must be relinquished period. Then while you have the ability to hunt or target shoot, your aware of how important being a good person really is. and how you really care about the children.
The only support I have for my claim is the deafening silence on the subject before the radical era of the late 1960s, when suddenly white America thought the Black Panthers were going to start shooting white people on sight. So yes, I call bullshit on you. I asked for one other cite beside the single one you previously gave, in which a poll asked people who may have never spoken out or organized at all what their personal preference on a hypothetical was.
Probably because, at least so far in history, the first step toward regimenting the populace under a dictatorship has never been confiscating their cars.
In my state at least, if you are arrested for DUI, the car you are driving is immediately confiscated. It doesn’t matter if you own it, your mom or your company. You don’t get it back until you are acquitted of the charge. That can be six months. If you’re found guilty, they keep it.
Why? Is somebody who can’t hit the broadside of a barn/target more dangerous? Although there is something to be said for training gangstas, often drive-bys hit everyone nearby except the target.
That sounds very similar to the right wing’s beloved three-strikes laws. Where a murderer is treated the same as a guy who had some pot in some places.
Does not compute. Does having a DL make people less likely to DUI or drive crappy?
The BPP was the impetus for banning public carry in Oakland. I recently handled a rifle that I am told was given as a gift for subscribing to a newspaper way back. Not just any newspaper, but the San Francisco Chronicle! Things have changed…
Hijack: I’m not calling bullshit on you, but that doesn’t sound right. I looked it up and it says: they may auction it off, not will. Maybe someone convicted in the worst category.
Also, aren’t impound fees like $100 a day? They’re charging people ~$18,400 at the end, or does the state not elect to collect the fees (and I can’t imagine a private impound yard holding it for free). One place says up to 10 days, the NC DMV website is not very easy to navigate but doesn’t seem to have much info.
A risk doesn’t infringe on your right to live. It’s not unreasonable to try to reduce the risk (though it’s by no means dire), but certain attempts to reduce the risk definitely do infringe on civil rights.
This argument is dead, dead, dead as a doornail that has rung down the curtain and joined the door invisible. If it weren’t enough that anybody could see that the framers explicitly wrote “the right of the People,” and that at any rate P -> Q doesn’t imply ~P -> ~Q, the Supreme Court went and affirmed the obvious after all. It is a settled fact, of text, of context, of tradition, and of jurisprudence, that the second amendment secures an individual right.
A gun’s mere existence poses absolutely no increased risk to anyone’s life - only it’s improper use does. And the last time I checked, we DO have laws regulating firearms usage. Which is why I have to take my pistols to a range to shoot them rather than simply plink at cans in my suburban back yard, and why I didn’t ring in the New Year by going outside a’whooping and a’hollering while shooting off a few dozen rounds up into the air. And I’ll be in big trouble if I ever point my guns at a person without being able to show that I had reasonable cause to believe I was in immediate danger ( and it only gets worse for me if I pulled the trigger).
It’s also illegal to deliberately manufacture a gun which is defective (say, one that explodes in the user’s hand when he trigger is pulled) or (for handguns at least) isn’t drop-safe.
So the sorts of laws you want are already on the books.
Actually, there are dead kids that would disagree with the premise that a “gun’s mere existence poses absolutely no increased risk to anyone’s life.” That risk may be very low on average but the risk is not zero. IMHO, I’m sick of hearing about legal gun owners and proper use of firearms. Legal gun owners’ guns do end up in criminal hands. Proper use of firearms is subject to accidents. The risk is not zero.
I have an autistic child. The only way I can possibly guarantee that there won’t be a gun accident in the house is by not having guns in the house. Now I do realize that there is some kind of risk of a gun invasion, but I’ll take those chances.
