Good article in Outdoor Life (or Field and Stream) pointing out that gun-owners have the facts and law. Even liberal con law scholar Larry Tribe concedes the law allows citizens the right to keep and bare arms.
But that doesn’t matter to the anti-2nd Amendment crowd. The righteousness of our position doesn’t carry any weight with them, and all we have to do is lose one `debate’.
The gun-grabbers will posit two salient arguments:
“Why do you `need’ (so many) guns?” and
“Guns that have no sporting (hunting/target shooting) value should be banned.”
Seting aside the rational response that any gun can be used for target-shooting, a car collector doesn’t have to show a `need’ for his collectible vehicles. He wants them, so he gets them. There is nothing illegal about owning more cars than one can drive in a week. And you don’t even need a driver’s license to buy cars, just to drive them.
Difference? There is no constitutional right to own and drive cars.
The tyrants just want to ban guns—all guns—and to get a `wedge in the oak’ they aim at `evil’ weapons: `plastic guns’, `Saturday night specials’, `assault rifles’, and so forth and so on. This is how Australia lost their guns over the last decade or so: incrementally. A step at a time.
If they succeed in outlawing one type of firearm, they then move on to another class until they reach bolt-action hunting rifles. By that time do you think this ilk won’t have the temerity to say, `There is no constitutional right to hunt.’?
Since the 2nd Amendment is the bulwark or `fail-safe’ of the other rights set forth in the Bill of Rights, if they succeed in taking this right, there is then nothing preventing totalitarian liberals (totalitarianism: faced with so many laws, a citizen simply cannot hope to comply) from taking the remainder of the rights.
If you say, gee, that sounds like a `slippery slope’, you’re right—that’s exactly what it is.
We in Virginia specifically added the right to hunt to the Commonwealth's Constitution back in 2000, but federally there actually is no such right.
Thank you for the information really appreciate your views on this issue.