It is most definitely applied to free speech cases. See: Citizens United.
If you live in the United States the entire planet is your “someone else,” but that’s not the point. The point is that, yes, we do make choices as a society that result in people dying - but if we decide the cost is too high or the benefit is too low, we can do things change them like creating attractive nuisance laws or speed limits or tighter restrictions on drunk driving. So what you’re saying is true, but it also leaves out all of the details that make it debatable in the first place.
Again, no. Citizens United involved political speech, which receives more protection than other speech types. Hence my previous post.
Well, maybe free speech was a bad example because strict scrutiny can apply but content neutral restrictions to free speech do not implicate strict scrutiny. So, it seems like strict scrutiny is not implicated in all constitutional rights. In fact I suspect that strict scrutiny will not be applied to the second amendment. I suspect it will be intermediate scrutiny.
It’s kind of weird to lump “suburbs” in with “bucolic rural areas” rather than with “cities”, especially when many suburbs make up what are essentially “urban corridors” and are much more closely associated with urban than with rural areas. Three out of five Americans currently live in municipalities called “cities”, with 37% of the total living in cities with over 50,000 inhabitants.
If what you mean is that most Americans don’t live in poor inner cities, yes, that’s true. But we definitely are largely an “amalgam of big cities”, demographics-wise.
I do that as someone that came from a bucolic rural area and sees most suburbs as trying desperately trying to emulate small-town life, even the ones as large or larger than what you’re calling cities. For the purposes of discussion, I’d say a “big city” (the term I used initially) has 500,000+ people in it.
(post shortened)(and apology for the delayed response)
*Licensing And Registration
Posted on October 7, 2000
Some people may wonder why NRA members and millions of other American gun owners protest so loudly when the gun control lobby offers one more “reasonable solution” to problems that they associate with guns. They may even be aware that Sarah Brady, chair of the nation`s largest anti-gun group–Brady Campaign (previously Handgun Control, Inc.)–years ago discussed her plans for the future with the New York Times. She said in her Aug. 15, 1993, interview that her group favors a “needs-based licensing” system, with all guns and all gun transfers registered. In the Brady world, an honest citizen who wanted to own a gun would have to prove to his or her local police the “need” for that gun.
Constitutional issues aside, those who wonder what motivates American gun owners should understand that perhaps only one other word in the English language so boils their blood as “registration,” and that word is “confiscation.” Gun owners fiercely believe those words are ominously related.
Gun owners also know that criminals will never register their illegally possessed guns and, in fact, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Haynes v. U.S. (309 U.S. 85 (1968)) that since felons are prohibited from owning firearms, compelling them to register them would violate their 5th Amendment rights against self-incrimination. Gun owners know further that the registration and licensing of America`s 60-65 million gun owners and their estimated 230 million firearms would require creation of a huge bureaucracy at tremendous taxpayer cost, without any tangible anti-crime benefit.
…In 1967, New York City passed an ordinance requiring a citizen to obtain a permit to own a rifle or shotgun, which would then be registered. Concerns over the potential use of those registration lists to confiscate guns in the future were dismissed as paranoia. In 1991, gun owners legitimate fears were realized, when the city passed a ban on the private possession of some semi-automatic rifles and shotguns, despite the police commissioners testimony that no registered firearms of the types banned had been used in violent crimes in the city. New Yorkers who had been licensed earlier to possess semi-automatic rifles and shotguns were told that any licensed firearms that were covered by the ban had to be surrendered, rendered inoperable or taken out of the city. They were warned that they might be subject to “spot checks.”*
If felons have a Constitutionally protected right not to register their firearms, who do the gun-grabbers actually want to register? The law-abiding gun owners, of course. But to what end? The government can’t confiscate the firearms of law-abiding citizens until they can pass laws making types of firearms, specific firearms, or all firearms, illegal. Then it’s just a matter of using the registration lists to send police or SWAT teams to round up the “offending” firearms from the homes of hundreds of thousands, or millions, of newly created criminals.
Gun grabbers have historically fought to create registration list and have fought to outlaw firearms, one-by-one if that was all they could do at that time. The gun grabbers could then proceeded to grab guns.
Felons don’t have a constitutionally protected right not to register their firearms. The NRA-ILA’s reading of Haynes is completely illogical (hint: it has nothing to do with the rights of felons) and they didn’t give the correct case citation either.
And one instance in NYC where no spot checks or confiscations actually occurred is not exactly convincing.
The only way that licensing and registration could gain traction is if you could convince those most opposed, gun rights advocates, that (1) it would be impossible for that to be used for any other negative purposes. That’s at a minimum. In addition, (2) there would need to be serious concessions regarding current laws.
For (1), maybe a constitutional amendment that says any restrictive law that implicates guns would require future federal constitutional amendment but any permissive law that implicates guns only required simple majority - at the federal, state, or local level.
For (2), Maybe repeal of the NFA, GCA, federal constitutional carry.
Before I get into this, I just wanted to repeat that I now mostly favor licensing and registration of handguns only.
I’m proposing a “shall issue” licensing system" using common standards across the country so that The gun I own in Viginia can be owned by me in California. (yes I am proposing federal pre-emption of all state and local gun laws).
I could see it if I was in California or something but I can’t see it at the federal level. We have had a federal registry of autmoatic machine guns for 80 years without confiscation (See, NFA). Why would you think that a more wisespread registry of less dangerous guns would result in confiscation?
The thing about registration is that it does not require participation by criminals to be effective. It restricts the flow of guns into crimnal hands.
We already do about 90% of the work required to create and maintain a registry through the NICS system. Data storage is relatively cheap and easy these days.
Yeah and we have had a federal gun registry for 80 years without confiscation.
To reduce straw purchases and other avenues of guns getting into crimnal hands.
And yet they have not done this with the NFA registry. Why is that? Is 80 years not long enough?
Have they ever achieved any success at the federal level?
I agree for the most part. What do you think it would take to get a handguns licensing and registration regime in place?
I don’t think we need an amendment, a federal statute with a waiver of sovereign immunity would probably be enough. I agree with federal constitutional carry, in fact I would want preemeption of all state and local laws.
“We” haven’t decided the price is too high on guns, though. In fact, opinion seems rather strongly divided on the topic. Nobody actually pays attention to the tired arguments both sides brought out in this thread any more. The hardliners are the only part of the debate, such as it is, that are heard these days and they bring nothing new to the debate. I say this as a hardliner. The pro side is inflexible and militant. The anti side has a history of creeping incrementalism and mendacity in pursuit of what they consider the greater good.
The very first step in an honest debate would almost certainly involve excluding all today’s loudest voices, on both sides, from the debate.
I didn’t say we had. But thank you for acknowledging my point, which is that the “price” is debatable and can be changed. So saying “everything has a price” does not settle the issue.
Everything having a price is, in fact, the whole of the issue. Those who consider the price a good value do not seem notably swayed by your arguments.
Yes. But for whatever reason you just didn’t mention that fact when you first posted in this thread.
Do you have any real responses? This passive-aggressive nipshitting got old the moment you started it.
I gave you a real response: your post about prices was a vague generality that didn’t address the actual issue. You’re acknowledging that now. What else do you want?
By registering your firearm you are admitting that you own a firearm. It’s already illegal for a felon to own a firearm. By demanding that a felon register/admit that they own a firearm, the government is requiring that the felon provide evidence against themselves that they are violating the law. The felon can still be arrested, charged, and convicted of owning a firearm but not for failing to register/admit that they own a firearm.
Law abiding gun owners can have their registered firearms arbitrarily declared illegal which then allows the government to confiscate the firearms.
Registration leads to confiscation.
*$24 Million Gun Confiscation Bill Passes In California For “Illegal” Guns -
April 20, 2013
The California state legislature passed a bill Thursday approving $24 million to expedite the confiscation of the estimated 40,000 handguns and assault weapons illegally owned by Californians. SB 140, authored by Sen. Mark Leno (D-San Francisco), seeks to remedy the gun-confiscation backlog that has left thousands of illegal guns on the streets, including those owned by those with criminal convictions or serious mental illness.
The author of the bill says, ““We are fortunate in California to have the first and only system in the nation that tracks and identifies individuals who at one time made legal purchases of firearms but are now barred from possessing them. However, due to a lack of resources, only a few of these illegally possessed weapons have been confiscated, and the mountain of firearms continues to grow each day.”
…Spokesperson for the California Department of Justice, says that of the individuals deemed unfit to own guns, about 30 percent have a criminal record, 30 percent are mentally ill, 20 percent have a restraining order out on them and a small percentage have a warrant out for their arrest.
…Because gun-confiscating agents do not obtain search warrants, their job involves convincing people to let them into their homes and hand over their guns. If an individual does turn over a gun, he or she can be arrested on suspicion of illegally owning a firearm.*
ETA:
I meant federal CCW (check a box on your gun license for CCW) not constitutional carry (for handguns) and constitutional carry for long guns.
The National Firearms Act required registration of machine guns. there are tens of thousands of these machine guns in circulation today. The national Firearms Act is 80 years old. Why is it taking them so long to confiscate these machine guns? Do gun grabbers have a soft spot in their hearts for machine guns or something?
That’s California and frankly I think what they did was unconstitutional but the NRA didn’t have the guts to fight anything in court until Alan Gura showed them up as pussies in Heller. What makes you think that we would ever confiscate firearms at the federal level?
And your response was “you aren’t wrong, but I just have to criticize you about something.” We’re done here. Or, I’m done with you, at least.