No, but the vicinity over which they are a danger is limited. And nothing is to say that we can’t criminalize shooting a gun at someone. But to say that “a gun in the home is closely analogous to a car on the road” is daft. In this country, at least, the significant majority of gun deaths are suicides, which suggests to me that a gun at home is primarily (but not exclusively) a danger to people in the home. A car on the road is almost exclusively a danger to people out in public.
Sure. But it doesn’t in fact follow that everything can be regulated even when it doesn’t venture outside the home.
I have no objection in principle as long as the regulation scheme isn’t, as I’m sure many would intend it to be, a de facto ban. I have long felt that a licensing scheme is in fact the right way to go. But frankly I think there’s no reason to suspect that the regulatory scheme septimus proposes wouldn’t almost immediately used in an effort to regulate out of existence what cannot constitutionally be banned.
This is why septimus’s attempt to remove the federal government from the picture entirely, under the guise of “states’ right’s, y’all!” is so disingenuous. The following two positions are in no way contradictory:[ul][li]The federal government should have limited powers, and state government should have broader powers.[*]The states should not have the power to arbitrarily strip away constitutionally guaranteed rights.[/ul][/li]So long as there is a federally protected right, the federal government must have a voice in attempts to curtail that right.
“Resolved:” in a debate does not mean the matter is settled. It means this is the statement to be debated. If you agree with the statement you argue for the affirmative, if you disagree you argue for the negative. Or if you’re on an academic debate team you’re prepared to argue for either side.
I’m not sure what your point is. Drive a car off your own property and onto the road and you run the risk of being checked and sanctioned in some way if your documents aren’t in order.
The same requirements could be put in place for guns whether stored at home or carried in public.
But I’m not from the USA so my thinking on this is completely different to yours. You probably are amazed at how difficult it is for me to own a firearm whereas I cannot comprehend why you think having so many of them are a good thing. Make it easy to get hold of weapons off the shelf that make killing quick, easy, clean, repeatable and risk free and no wonder you have so many deaths.
You seem happy with that over there, no need to restrict them at all, nothing to see here, in fact if anything there are not enough guns around.
Well, that and the fact that lots of voters would fight that regulation tooth and nail, but yes, the Second Amendment shouldn’t just be ignored as an inconvenient relic of the past. If we really wanted to make it difficult or even impossible to own a gun in this country, we could do that, but we should start with amending the Constitution to make that possible.
I think your point is becoming clearer. I think you actually mean “a gun is dangerous, both to you and to others, and as such should be regulated.” I’m not sure why it wouldn’t have been clearer to just say that, but there we are.
The problem with “guns are like cars and should be regulated with similar schemes” as an argument is that (a) guns aren’t particularly like cars and (b) you don’t seem to want to treat them particularly like we treat cars.
Same as if we license off-your-property firearms and you take one off your property.
We could do a lot of things; that does not mean we should. We license drivers – in an attempt to increase skill and to educate about the rules of the road – because operating a vehicle without any intent to harm is astoundingly dangerous. I wouldn’t be surprised if we see more restrictions on driving as autonomous vehicle technology develops. That level of danger simply does not exist for firearms.
That said, requiring training might reduce the few accidents we do have and make people better shots. I haven’t seen any studies. Licensing drivers certainly seems to make for fewer accidents, according to unvetted google search results. I certainly wouldn’t want to be carrying one around without some training. But I don’t know that it warrants a government licensing program.
I’ve never purchased a firearm and have no basis for comparison, let along amazement. I do, however, have some interest in rational risk assessment. And therefore I am not frightened of firearm violence. Driving on the DC beltway on the other hand…
Well, sure, but that voice of the federal government could be limited to the Supreme Court enforcing the Constitution, and nothing further – which is what I interpreted the OP to be proposing. There’s no rule that Congress needs to pass any additional laws to protect a Constitutional right more than it’s already protected by the Constitution. In some cases, they have done so, and often this was a good thing, because the Constitution on it’s own didn’t go far enough. (I’m thinking of Civil Rights laws, for example.) But it doesn’t follow that every right needs stricter protections than those granted by the Constitution. For one thing, it depends on how much protection the Constitution already grants, which varies depending on the text of each Amendment and the caselaw built up around them over the years.
Of course I need you to say that! You seem to think that I should read your mind and distill the essence of your oracular wisdom into a kernel of truth. But it’s not my place to develop your argument for you. I can only judge your argument on the basis of what you actually said, and what you actually said was “a gun at home for self-defence purposes is the equivalent of a car on the road.”
If you don’t want to be misunderstood, perhaps you should try saying what you mean.
I clicked “Post” a bit too soon there, but what I was going to say was, basically, it’s quite possible that a state could completely restrict guns to the home and impose strict licensing requirements, and still not be found to be in violation of the 2nd Amendment. (Maybe with some exception for licensed “militias” outside the home, if we want to actually start taking that part of the 2nd Amendment seriously again.)
I’m not trying to say they should go that far; but if they haven’t yet tried to push those boundaries, then who knows how much of a barrier the 2nd Amendment really is?
Probably the main reason we don’t have national drivers licenses is we don’t need to since the states have decided that for any normal use of a car, a license in any state is as good as any other state. Imagine if New York required me to get a New York drivers license in addition to my Minnesota license if I wanted to rent a car their. And yet we tolerate this situation with constitutional rights and the ability to defend yourself even if we don’t with something that’s a privilege and can’t be used to defend your life against criminals. If we regulated guns like cars, New York would gladly accept my Minnesota license.
Nor do we set limits on engine displacement or fuel tank capacity on cars like we do fire rate or magazine capacity. With the proper license you can even drive a Mack truck down the road in any state in the union. Considering the minuscule odds of any given gun being used in a crime compared to a car in a crash, insurance will laughably cheap. Regulating guns like cars is starting to sound better all the time.
