rbernie said:
Before y'all declare cultural victory, look at how many of your Congresscritters gave Mexican President Felipe Calderón a standing ovation when he demanded a reinstatement of the federal AWB ...Party affiliations and politics aside - the sad fact is that the kind of folk that would gut the RKBA have NOT gone away, and they likely never will.
Very true and a very important point. Things just aren't fixed once and for all. Just because you lost that weight and got in shape, don't let your gym membership expire and go back to your old eating habits. And just because we've won some battles for the RKBA doesn't mean it's all over and we can stop trying now.
It's all too easy to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.
Gungnir said:
Simple we're conditioned...
Gungnir said:
And within 5 posts I prove my point of why I'm just as afraid of the gun lovin' community as the Brady Bunch.
There are none so blind as those that cannot see.
And maybe some of us have a different perspective. And maybe some of us aren't interested in signing on to your vision of ideological purity. And maybe you're not the ultimate repository of all truth.
For example:
[1] As for open carry, if someone finds that a convenient way to carry his gun, and it's legal, that's fine as far as I'm concerned. But some of us are skeptical of its value as a tactic to further the RKBA. And even to the extent it can be a useful tactic, it, like all tactics, may be useful at some times, in some places, under some circumstances and for some purposes, but not others. The wise activist knows the difference and chooses tactics most appropriate to the time, place, circumstances and purpose.
[2] Whether or not someone needs fully automatic weapons is beside the point. Repeal of the the Hughes Amendment, and certainly the NFA, is most likely a non-starter in this political environment.
And I doubt the courts would be very receptive to arguments that either should be tossed. Of course if someone thinks differently and has the time and money, the courts are open for business. But I think that there are at present much higher priority issues on the RKBA agenda.
[3] It is indeed current law that felons and those convicted of crimes of domestic violence (as well as some other classes of persons) may not lawfully possess a gun. It's been that way for over 40 years. Of course, those who object can try to change things through the political process or in the courts. But again, I think there are higher RKBA priorities. In the meantime, the law is what it is.
[4] As for concealed weapons permits, the option in many places was that carrying a gun in public would remain illegal. Shall issue permit systems have, in many ways, been a political trade off. I think they have generally represented a good bargain. I'd rather see honest people be able to lawfully carry a loaded gun in public, even at the price of getting a permit, than be barred entirely from doing so.
If anyone wants to challenge these permit systems as unconstitutional, the courts are still open for business.
[5] The training issue is a tough one. I don't like the government requiring things. At the same time, I'm shocked that a lot of folks who can't hit a target think for some reason that they don't need to voluntarily get any training. There's lots of atrocious gun handling and abysmal marksmanship out there. Perhaps there's no way to effectively require competency. But I'm very dismayed by the fact that so many people I see apparently have no interest in becoming even halfway decent, or at least have no idea how to go about it.
[6] I don't know whether the 4473 is registration or not. It is, however, a current fact of life, unless the law gets changed. But for me at least, trying to change this is another much lower priority.
[7] I guess if someone wants to risk selling a gun to a prohibited person, it's his business. But I also suspect that some folks would rather not take that risk. If they want to sell privately only to someone with a CCW or only through an FFL, who am I to object?
In any case, we live in a pluralistic, political society, and in the real world there is going to be some "gun control."
There are a bunch of people out there who don't like guns (for whatever reason). There are also a lot of people who are scared of guns or of people who want to have guns. Some think guns should be banned and private citizens shouldn't have them at all. Some may be willing to go a long with private citizens being able to own guns as long as they were regulated. And these people vote.
We may think these people are wrong and that they have no valid reason to believe the way they do. We might think that many of them are crazy (and maybe some of them are). Of course some of them think that we have no valid reasons to think the way we do, and some of them think that we're crazy. But they still vote.
Of course we vote too, but there are enough of them to have an impact. They may be more powerful some places than others. But the bottom line is there would always be some level of gun control.
Of course there's the Second Amendment. But there is also a long line of judicial precedent for the proposition that Constitutionally protected rights may be subject to limited governmental regulation, subject to certain standards. How much regulation will pass muster remains to be seen. But the bottom line, again, is that we are unlikely to see all gun control thrown out by the courts; and we will therefore always have to live with some level of gun control.
How much or how little control we are saddled with will depend. It will depend in part on how well we can win the hearts and minds of the fence sitters. It will depend on how well we can acquire and maintain political and economic power and how adroitly we wield it. It will depend on how skillfully we handle post
Heller litigation.
So whether or not we like it, whether or not we think the Second Amendment allows it and notwithstanding what we think the Founding Fathers would have thought about it, we will have to live with some forms of gun control.
We're left with opportunities to influence how much. Some things will be doable and somethings will not be reasonably doable.
