Posted on 08/03/2006 7:03:58 AM PDT by steve-b
WASHINGTON - We're going through one of those phases where people are reading the news and talking about buying guns.
As someone who's blogged for years under the pseudonym "Armed Liberal," you'd think that I'd clearly approve. And part of me does, in no small measure because it reflects a shift in the consensus away from "helpless citizen" toward "citizen with the intent to be more self-reliant."
And, to be honest, I see this issue largely as one of attitude. I've said in the past that the largest impact of gun ownership is symbolic, like a Sikh's knives. Owning a gun — and the attitudes that come with it — symbolize the notion that, first and foremost, we are adults who have the freedom to be entrusted with dangerous tools.
But gun ownership is not entirely symbolic, and there's the rub.
While I believe that everyone should have the right to own a gun (with the obvious exceptions of the criminal and the insane), that doesn't mean everyone should choose to own a gun.
That's because while I believe in rights, I also believe in responsibilities — and I don't think they can be separated. You want rights? Great. You have to take a good helping of responsibilities to go with them.
So let me take a moment and talk to the people who are reading the news and thinking of heading to the gun store.
First, go sleep on it. Owning a gun is an immense responsibility (one that too many people take far too lightly). If you own a gun, you are responsible for it 24/7/365; are you really prepared for that?
A gun is not a magic talisman that will make your problems go away by possessing it or brandishing it. While I'll acknowledge that many confrontations do end when the bad guy sees a gun, I'll suggest that assuming that will apply in your case is cargo-cult thinking at its worst.
So simply owning a gun doesn't by itself make you a whole lot safer; famed firearms instructor Jeff Cooper said that "owning a gun doesn't make you armed any more than owning a piano makes you a musician."
So you have to adopt a set of behaviors and habits.
Some are about the security of the gun — keeping it from being stolen, or from letting children have access to it. Buy a gun safe. Use it religiously. I had one firearm stolen from me 20 years ago, and it still weighs on me today.
Some of it is about self-knowledge. There's a little bit of crazy in all of us. Is yours fully under control? Are you sure? Would your friends all agree? What if the answer to that question isn't an immediate and obvious "Huh? Of course it is"?
And if you aren't 100 percent sure that five of your closest friends would answer the same way, think hard before you head to the gun store. Self-restraint is not a habit our modern life cultivates, but it is one that is simply mandatory for people who possess dangerous tools.
Some of it is about committing to some basic level of competence in order to make the gun a useful tool. There are classes you can and should take almost anywhere. They range from the big-time schools, like Gunsite (www.gunsite.com), Insight (www.insightstraining.com) and Thunder Ranch (www.thunderranchinc.com). To local instructors like Mike Dalton (www.isishootists.com/training.htm) in Los Angeles, NRA classes or other private classes at ranges throughout the area you live.
While it may seem cumbersome to think about all this, the demands really aren't that high. The gun is dangerous and valuable, so secure it. It can make bad attitudes and bad behavior deadly — make sure yours are well under control.
And finally, remember that owning a gun isn't nearly the same thing as being able to use one safely and effectively, so learn how to use it. If you can't comfortably go that far, please don't buy a gun. It's that simple.
If you can comfortably go that far, welcome to the community.
Personally, I need to get to the range this weekend....
Compelling state interest? Er... what happened to the explicitly defined limitations of the Constitution? Doesn't that count any more in your weird little world?
Like all rights - just cause I can doesn't mean I should.
They're big bovine herbivores, so they taste pretty much like range (as opposed to feed lot) beef.
Very little fat, though. In fact too little. You have to compensate for that.
Alas, I'm out. No permit for the past 3 seasons.
I've cited those opinions, yes. What, truth hurts? Shooting the messenger helps the pain?
"You just can't admit that you will take most any position to 'win' an argument, can you?"
Not the point. I just want you to stop lying to people by telling them that the second amendment protects their individual RKBA. It gives them a false sense of security and demotivates them from securing the protection of these rights at the state level. Why bother when tpaine says RKBA is already protected by the second amendment?
You're Sarah Brady's best ally.
So far, the only rebuttal to my posts has been the lame, "but the courts are wrong and I'm right!".
So, I'd have to agree with you there -- we don't need more illiterates like that.
That is because you never read the source material we throw at you on thread after thread. Quotes from the Founders, the State courts that acknowledge the 2A as binding on them, documentation from the Constitutional Conventions of the States ratifying said Amendments and what they understood as the power they were giving the FedGov and the limitation on obstructing an individuals Rights.
Just keep ignoring all that. I like having a sock puppet like you around.
Growing up in Western PA, I knew quite a few folks like that, who relied on hunting season to put meat on their family tables...Some of them had a clear understanding of the 2nd Amendment, but most were of the type that saw it as the "right to hunt." These were typically union members from the mines or steel industry who were brainwashed in all regards of their political thinking.
Under strict scrutiny, a law against slander or libel would not violate the first amendment guarantee of free speech since the state can show individuals will be harmed if free speech is used for this purpose.
Now, I have no idea what your "explicitly defined limitations of the Constitution" have to do with anything I'm discussing. Care to expound on that?
You've also agreed with & cited court opinions on the 'collective right' position many times over the years.
When it comes to the second amendment, I said Congress may not infringe the formation of a state militia.
You've 'said' far more than that in opposition to our individual RKBA's. -- Your posting history on FR is in effect one long rant on how it can be infringed by fed/state/local 'legislation'.
In all U.S. history, no federal law has been found to violate the second amendment.
In all U.S. history, no federal law has been found to violate the second amendment because the USSC has refused to hear our grievances on that issue.
-- You support the Court; -- can you admit it?
I support the clear words of the 2nd.
They were read and rebutted. Which left you nothing else except, "but the courts are wrong and I'm right!".
This should be required reading for all first time "thinking about it" owners.
OHMYGOD My guns might do something awful if I don't check on them 24/7 - What drivel. It is no more responsibility to owning a gun than owning a can of gas for your lawnmower or a power saw.
Some are about the security of the gun — keeping it from being stolen, or from letting children have access to it. Buy a gun safe. Use it religiously. I had one firearm stolen from me 20 years ago, and it still weighs on me today.
More $hit If someone STEALS something from you it obviously isn't your fault. Liberal "blame the victim" thinking. Now I did have some stuff stolen from me some time ago and the only way it bothers me is if I find out who the SOB is ...
There's a little bit of crazy in all of us. Is yours fully under control?
Oh jeez more of this liberal crap. Guns are tools like anything else. There may be a little crazy in the jackass who wrote this, but if more were armed, then there would be fewer crazies left.
"Therefore, by criminalizing protected Second Amendment activity based upon a civil state court order with no particularized findings, the statute is over-broad and in direct violation of an individual's Second Amendment rights...Under this statute, a person can lose his Second Amendment rights not because he has committed some wrong in the past, or because a judge finds he may commit some crime in the future, but merely because he is in a divorce proceeding. Although he may not be a criminal at all, he is stripped of his right to bear arms as much as a convicted felon. Second Amendment rights should not be so easily abridged." US. vs. Emerson
Er... no. Your "rebuttals" were little more than what self-serving lawyers and other assorted gun haters have managed to do to errode the Right. You have yet to rebutt a single original source, nor the plain language of the Constitution itself. You spin the things you think you can and ignore the rest.
The Courts ARE wrong. The Founders were right and the Constitution means what it says. Sorry if you don't like that, but there it is...
you? weigh in!
Among the natural rights of the Colonists are these: First, a right to life; Secondly, to liberty; 'thirdly, to property; together with the right to support and defend them in the best manner they can. - Samuel Adams, 'Rights of the Colonists," Nov. 1772
The Citizens of the United States of America have a right to applaud themselves for giving to Mankind examples of an enlarged and liberal policy: a policy worthy of imitation. All possess alike liberty of conscience and immunities of citizenship. It is now no more that toleration is spoken of, as if it was by the indulgence of one class of people that another enjoyed the exercise of their inherent natural rights. For happily the Government of the United States, which gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance, requires only that they who live under its protection should demean themselves as good citizens in giving it on all occasions their effectual support. May the Children of the Stock of Abraham, who dwell in this land, continue to merit and enjoy the good will of the other Inhabitants; while every one shall sit under his own vine and fig tree, and there shall be none to make him afraid. - George Washington, Letter to the Hebrew Congregation of Newport, Rhode Island (1790)
"The second amendment to the federal constitution, as well as the constitutions of many of the states, guaranty to the people the right to bear arms. This is a natural right, not created or granted by the constitutions." Henry Campbell Black, Handbook of American Constitutional Law, 1895.
"The right of the people to keep and bear arms has been recognized by the General Government; but the best security of that right after all is, the military spirit, that taste for martial exercises, which has always distinguished the free citizens of these States … Such men form the best barrier to the liberties of America." Gazette of the United States, October 14, 1789
"The whole of the Bill [of Rights] is a declaration of the right of the people at large or considered as individuals … It establishes some rights of the individual as unalienable and which consequently, no majority has a right to deprive them of." Albert Gallatin of the New York Historical Society, October 7, 1789
"the powers not delegated to congress by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people. What we are about to consider are certainly not delegated to congress, nor are they noticed in the prohibitions to states; they are therefore reserved either to the states or to the people. Their high nature, their necessity to the general security and happiness will be distinctly perceived.
"In the second article, it is declared, that a well regulated militia is necessary to the security of a free state; a proposition from which few will dissent. Although in actual war, in the services of regular troops are confessedly more valuable; yet, while peace prevails, and in the commencement of a war before a regular force can be raised, the militia form the palladium of the country. They are ready to repel invasion, to suppress insurrection, and preserve the good order and peace of government. That they should be well regulated, is judiciously added. A disorderly militia is disgraceful to itself, and dangerous not to the enemy, but to its own country. The duty of the state government is, to adopt such regulations as will tend to make good soldiers with the least interruptions of the ordinary and useful occupations of civil life. In this all the Union has a strong and visible interest. The corollary, from the first position, is that the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.
"The prohibition is general. No clause in the Constitution could by any rule of construction be conceived to give to congress a power to disarm the people. Such a flagitious attempt could only be made under some general pretence by a state legislature. But if in any blind pursuit of inordinate power, either should attempt it, this amendment may be appealed to as a restraint on both.
"In most of the countries of Europe, this right does not seem to be denied, although it is allowed more or less sparingly, according to circumstances. In England, a country which boasts so much of its freedom, the right was secured to protestant subjects only, on the revolution of 1688; and it is cautiously described to be that of bearing arms for their defence, "suitable to their conditions, and as allowed by law." An arbitrary code for the preservation of game in that country has long disgraced them. A very small proportion of the people being permitted to kill it, though for their own subsistence; a gun or other instrument, used for that purpose by an unqualified person, may be seized and forfeited. Blackstone, in whom we regret that we cannot always trace expanded principles of rational liberty, observes however, on this subject, that the prevention of popular insurrections and resistance to government by disarming the people, is oftener meant than avowed, by the makers of forest and game laws." William Rawle, A View of the Constitution of the United States of America 125-26 (2d ed. 1829). Mr. Rawle was appointed as a U.S. Attorney for Pennsylvania by President George Washington. Mr. Rawle was also Washington's candidate to be the nation's first Attorney General, but Rawle declined. Chapter 10. Whole Book.
Campaign Finance Reform was not found to violate the 1st Amendment either. That doesn't make it Constitutional.
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