Posted on 04/20/2007 1:49:09 AM PDT by Oakleaf
None of our rights are absolute. The government does have the assigned duty of protecting the citizens. Any act to protect citizens will, in some way, limit the rights of citizens.
The question isn’t therefore whether it is proper for the federal government to have any restrictions at all on gun ownership. Just like with free speech rights, there are valid limitations based on the rights of each person to life and liberty.
I still don’t know if Cho was known to be mentally ill sufficient to trigger valid government action against his right to have a weapon. He certainly SEEMS to have been, but I wonder how “serious” this stuff really was at the time, compared to how it is judged now that people know the end result. It’s easy to look back and remember things more harshly.
I would note that nothing in the constitution explicitly states that a felon can be denied his right to free speech or to own a gun, but few would argue that convicts should have CCW privileges.
I didn't know that. Needs to be repeated.
I understand what you are saying, but I tend to be a strict constructionist when interpreting the Constitution. The right to free speech, for example, is absolute. If absolute free speech doesn't work, then amend the constitution. I feel the same way about the Second Amendment. The right to bear arms is unqualified. If modern society needs to omit from that right people who have been convicted of certain crimes or certifiably crazy, then we should amend the Second Amendment to provide such limitation. Whether the issue is free speech or firearms, I don't trust legislative bodies or political judges to make these decisions.
First, we believe in absolutely gun-free, zero-tolerance, totally safe schools. That means no guns in America's schools, period ... with the rare exception of law enforcement officers or trained security personnel.
No qualifier before or after about whether this was high school or college.
So no... the NRA is hardly the hardliners on RKBA that you have historically made them out to be.
By the time I got down to your reply I saw that the tea leaves had already been read by yourself and others.
Yep, exactly.
Call ‘em. It’s a toll free number. 1-800-392-8683.
We'd better think about this one. Given that the vast majority of people in the psychobabble / sociologist line of work are flaming, anti-gun liberals, do we really want them to make the determination as to who's entitled to have a gun? I can see this quickly degenerating into a situation where political enemies will be given a mental health assessment detrimental to their ever buying a gun on the legit. market.
"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." - Manuel II Palelologus
Absolutely! Nothing good can come from giving that information, real or contrived, to the federal government. They can't even be trusted to honor the constitution.
We have more laws than we need now!
Should only citizens have the right to free speech? To remain silent? To be have trials by jury? Etc.
Amazing how many so-called freepers readily bend over for federal powers.
This is stupid .... more laws are NOT going to stop people like this.
You do realize that everyone in that place will kill him after he gets 1 or 2 others?
There's nothing in there about the Air Force either. You missed the commerce clause gives Congress the authority to regulate the sale of firearms. That means they can license dealers and creat regs regarding participants in any particular area, or item in commerce.
The fed 18USC922 gives a list of things that should disqualify folks from partaking in firearms transactions. As it is now, the States are requested to submit info regarding fed disqualifiers to the DOJ for entry into the NICS database. It's voluntary per 28CFR25.4 now.
In 2002 the house passed a bill to change that to must supply the info. Had that bill been passed by the Senate and signed by Bush, Cho's court record would have shown up and hte firearms transaction would have been denied. That would have been a good thing.
Seems to me that this is a Democrat policy contradiction: They demanded (and got) the Brady Bill which would supposedly prevent mental nutcases from lawfully acquiring firearms, then two years later they sealed the HHS medical confidentiality rules under HIPAA so tightly that they wailed like an alley cat when the Patriot Act permitted the government to open a person's medical records in the interests of 'National Security'.
They can't have it both ways, damn it.
Let the Democrats go in front of their voter base and say that they're relaxing HIPAA's vault-like medical confidentiality rules to allow FBI background checks on handgun transfers.
18USC922(g)(4) refers to ajudicated a danger to self, or others, or invonluntarily committed as such. It does not refer to any abitrary BS. The law refers to court rulings, which almost allways come as a result of a criminal complaint. The law does not refer to anything other than that.
The relevant law is 18USC922(g)(4), which regards court records, not medical records. Those court records which contain a judicial finding that the person is a danger to self, or others, due to mental defect, should be in the DOJ's NICS dbase.
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