2012-12-20 15:25![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
digitaldiscipline
digitaldisciplineA well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.
Leaving aside for a moment the elephant in the room - that the Second Amendment is, on the face of it, simply a mechanism for citizens to be armed as soldiers against threats to the sovereignty of the nation. In essence, at the time of our nation's founding, we were an approximation of modern-day Switzerland (link is to FB). Thus, Red Dawn is an expression of strict Constitutionalism! The following is a sanitized quoting of Rude Pundit's suggestions for contemporary firearms ownership in America.
[begin quoting, including his links, though I am reformatting and pasteurizing; the original can be found here]
The Rude Pundit begins with a sad, simple premise: shit that can be done in his lifetime. Because a total gun ban, hell, just a total handgun and assault weapon ban in this country is realistically never going to happen, and, even in the wildest utopian scenarios, it would take decades to achieve.
Countries that have banned guns have not become lawless wastelands. One oft-cited statistic is that Japan only had two gun deaths last year. Let's put that in perspective. We have about 2.5 or times the number of people as Japan in the United States. That means 5-6 gun deaths for our 310 million people. Twirl that around you brain for a minute or two.
Here we go:
1. The basics - stuff that the majority of the country agrees on:
- Background checks for all gun sales.
- A ban on all assault weapons and magazines over 10 rounds.
This is pretty much the stuff that President Obama called for yesterday.
2. Beyond basics - stuff that is still easy to do but is resisted by many gun enthusiasts.
- Every gun registered.
- Licenses to use guns, renewable by test every 2 years.
- A ban on some kinds of bullets, like hollow points.
- A ban on online sales of weapons.
- Microstamping firearms.
- Bullet identification systems.
- Massive funding of gun buybacks.
- Limit firearm purchases to 1 a month.
- Cap the number of firearms one can own unless registered as a dealer.
- License all dealers.
- Required use of safety locks and storage in homes with children.
[This is me chiming in for a moment - in yesterday's installment, RP made the suggestion that most of the regulations to implement these rules isn't a matter of property rights, it's a matter of commerce, over which Congress has authority. Regulating the manufacture, sale, and licensing of things is certainly under its purview with this line of reasoning, and, as Justice Roberts said in reference to the AHCA, the commerce clause gives Congress the tools to do a lot of things. Whether or not people are happy about it is a different matter.]
3. Getting radical - Things that aren't especially radical, but here and now, seem that way.
- A federal law against concealed carry of firearms.
- A ban on large purchases of ammunition.
- No private sales of firearms.
- No firearms in homes with people who would not pass a firearms purchase background check.
- A confiscation of all assault weapons that were previously banned. If those have to be from some people's cold, head hands, well, that's their choice to make.
[Me again. This is where my resistance begins, very slightly, to manifest; the fourth item there seems overreaching, and implies that everyone in the country would have to take a firearms purchase background check. The parallel to automobiles as potentially dangerous things people use a lot pertains, in my mind - a household with unlicensed and unlicensable individuals (minors, etc) can still be in possession of a car or cars, though the owner of record or person who holds the insurance policy is liable for what happens with them, for the most part.]
You might hate speed limits because you know you can drive fast safely. But all it takes is one person not as skilled as you believe you are to spin out and kill a whole bunch of us. If you speed a lot and get caught, you get your license taken away. All you gotta do is respect the speed limit, and you can drive as much as you want.
Leaving aside for a moment the elephant in the room - that the Second Amendment is, on the face of it, simply a mechanism for citizens to be armed as soldiers against threats to the sovereignty of the nation. In essence, at the time of our nation's founding, we were an approximation of modern-day Switzerland (link is to FB). Thus, Red Dawn is an expression of strict Constitutionalism! The following is a sanitized quoting of Rude Pundit's suggestions for contemporary firearms ownership in America.
[begin quoting, including his links, though I am reformatting and pasteurizing; the original can be found here]
The Rude Pundit begins with a sad, simple premise: shit that can be done in his lifetime. Because a total gun ban, hell, just a total handgun and assault weapon ban in this country is realistically never going to happen, and, even in the wildest utopian scenarios, it would take decades to achieve.
Countries that have banned guns have not become lawless wastelands. One oft-cited statistic is that Japan only had two gun deaths last year. Let's put that in perspective. We have about 2.5 or times the number of people as Japan in the United States. That means 5-6 gun deaths for our 310 million people. Twirl that around you brain for a minute or two.
Here we go:
1. The basics - stuff that the majority of the country agrees on:
- Background checks for all gun sales.
- A ban on all assault weapons and magazines over 10 rounds.
This is pretty much the stuff that President Obama called for yesterday.
2. Beyond basics - stuff that is still easy to do but is resisted by many gun enthusiasts.
- Every gun registered.
- Licenses to use guns, renewable by test every 2 years.
- A ban on some kinds of bullets, like hollow points.
- A ban on online sales of weapons.
- Microstamping firearms.
- Bullet identification systems.
- Massive funding of gun buybacks.
- Limit firearm purchases to 1 a month.
- Cap the number of firearms one can own unless registered as a dealer.
- License all dealers.
- Required use of safety locks and storage in homes with children.
[This is me chiming in for a moment - in yesterday's installment, RP made the suggestion that most of the regulations to implement these rules isn't a matter of property rights, it's a matter of commerce, over which Congress has authority. Regulating the manufacture, sale, and licensing of things is certainly under its purview with this line of reasoning, and, as Justice Roberts said in reference to the AHCA, the commerce clause gives Congress the tools to do a lot of things. Whether or not people are happy about it is a different matter.]
3. Getting radical - Things that aren't especially radical, but here and now, seem that way.
- A federal law against concealed carry of firearms.
- A ban on large purchases of ammunition.
- No private sales of firearms.
- No firearms in homes with people who would not pass a firearms purchase background check.
- A confiscation of all assault weapons that were previously banned. If those have to be from some people's cold, head hands, well, that's their choice to make.
[Me again. This is where my resistance begins, very slightly, to manifest; the fourth item there seems overreaching, and implies that everyone in the country would have to take a firearms purchase background check. The parallel to automobiles as potentially dangerous things people use a lot pertains, in my mind - a household with unlicensed and unlicensable individuals (minors, etc) can still be in possession of a car or cars, though the owner of record or person who holds the insurance policy is liable for what happens with them, for the most part.]
You might hate speed limits because you know you can drive fast safely. But all it takes is one person not as skilled as you believe you are to spin out and kill a whole bunch of us. If you speed a lot and get caught, you get your license taken away. All you gotta do is respect the speed limit, and you can drive as much as you want.
