TexasCHLforum.com

seamusTX wrote:

jimlongley wrote:... I bought my first own gun, a Winchester single shot .22LR bolt action, at the age of twelve, "off the wall" (it was on display and the box was long since gone) and bicycled home with it across my handlebars.

That must have been a proud day.

- Jim

Oh, indeed! I had been saving my pennies to buy that rifle for quite a while, it seemed like years.

And then the kid down the street decided that I had to be lying because, after all, everybody knew that Winchester didn't make bolt actions or single shots.

frankie_the_yankee wrote:If you don't think that the principles of economics apply to individual and aggregate human behavior in general, my only suggestion, with all due respect, is to revisit the subject more thoroughly than you may have in the past.

I never said they didn't apply in general, I just said that they are not laws, they are not immutable, as I am sure Professor Lott would point out.

frankie_the_yankee wrote:But I'm entitled to my opinion, right?

Of course, as long as you recognize that others' are equally valid.

frankie_the_yankee wrote:I still maintain (and Lott agrees) that humans make choices considering cost-benefit and risk-benefit factors.

And if the local gang banger sees more benefit in carrying his "mm" he won't even think twice about laws against it.

frankie_the_yankee wrote:If you make something harder, at margin, people will choose to do less of it.

But more background checks don't make it that much harder, we have 40 plus years of history to demonstrate that. It's time to give up trying to make it harder for criminals to get guns, it doesn't work, and make the risk very real, which has been demonstrated to work.

frankie_the_yankee wrote:For instance, carrying a gun might be more important to a gangbanger than to the typical LAC. If carrying is banned, some (many?) gangbangers will still carry because it is very important to them, while many LAC's will not carry because their lives would be ruined by an arrest. So the desire to carry is MORE ELASTIC for LAC's than for gangbangers, for instance.

Which is exactly what I have been saying. In today's society, in the US, more background checks will have a tendency to discourage LACs more then criminals.

frankie_the_yankee wrote:But if you have two groups that are doing something at whatever rates, and you make it harder or more risky or more penalized for one group while not changing the constraints on the other group, the first group will do it as some lesser rate than before while the second group will not change their behavior.

Thus my argument. Go to Vermont style carry nationally and establish extreme penalties for criminal possession of a weapon. Establish those boot camps, and chain gangs, and see to it that felons realize that they are truncating, if not completely forfeiting, ALL civil rights, for life, except in VERY unusual circumstances. That way we infringe upon law abiding citizens way less.

frankie_the_yankee wrote:Background checks make it harder for criminals to buy guns, while having almost no effect on LAC's.

I don't see that as being particularly self evident.

frankie_the_yankee wrote:Sure many criminals will still buy them.

Or steal them, or swap their sisters for them (Queens New York.)

frankie_the_yankee wrote:But fewer of them will do so than without background checks. And the selection of guns available to them will be smaller.

Hasn't been true so far, and I see no reason for that to change with more infringement.

frankie_the_yankee wrote:And "infringement"? Remember, it doesn't say, "Congress shall make no law.....". It could have. Why do you think the Founders wrote it the way they did, instead of writing something like, "Congress shall make no law limiting in any way the right of the people to purchase, possess, and carry arms either in defense of themselves or of the state. Such activity is the exclusive domain and individual right of the people, who may buy possess and carry arms at any place, at any time, and in any manner, as they, individually, see fit."

Because "shall not be infringed" takes the standard higher than "congress shall make no law . . ." The original was much closer to what you suggest, but got whittled down for brevity and elegance. Shall not be infringed means just that, no rules, no laws, no confiscation (which they had lived through) no registration, nothing. Also remember that one of the weapons the Redcoats were traipsing around Middlesex County looking for was a cannon, so even crew served weapons, privately owned artillery, were covered under the blanket "shall not be infringed."

frankie_the_yankee wrote:Do you think they were stupid, or naive? Do you think I could come up with this formulation off the cuff, and yet it somehow eluded the drafters of one of the greatest documents in human history?

See above.

frankie_the_yankee wrote:I think they wrote it the way they did for good reason, because it said exactly what they wanted it to say.

Yup, no infringement.

frankie_the_yankee wrote:And if we all live to be 200 years old, you will never see a court throw out a background check requirement on the grounds that it is an "infringement".

Only if I keep my eyes closed. That's really kind of a ridiculous guarantee to make, could you have predicted Roe v Wade 200 years ago? It would have been inconceivable (forgive the obvious pun) in that era, to even imagine abortions being generally available, much less a "right."

frankie_the_yankee wrote:The DC gun ban, essentially a total prohibition, was just recently ruled to be an infringement. But go read the decision. See if you find anything in it saying that licensing of owners or registration of guns would be an unconstitutional infringement.

I have read it, cover to cover, one of the nice things about being retired is the convenience of doing so, and you're right, it doesn't mention licensing or registration as being an infringement per se, but that wasn't the decision they were asked to render, and recall that they did point out that the inability to comply with the registration requirement was indeed an infringement.

D.C. does serve as an excellent example of what I have been saying, though. They passed a law, and then worked around it, adding rules here and there, until it was impossible to legally comply with the law, my argument against allowing the registration camel's nose into the tent to begin with, and that extends to "stricter" background checks that have absolutely no effect on criminals.

frankie_the_yankee wrote:Note: I DO NOT FAVOR THESE THINGS. I'm merely pointing out an example, in the legal world, of the meaning of the word infringement.

So you're an attorney? If not, I think my supplied definition is equally valid.

seamusTX wrote:In 1950, you could buy firearms though the mail from Sears and Penney. You could buy them at most hardware stores.

- Jim

It wasn't quite that long ago, but almost, when I bought my first own gun, a Winchester single shot .22LR bolt action, at the age of twelve, "off the wall" (it was on display and the box was long since gone) and bicycled home with it across my handlebars.

frankie_the_yankee wrote:Jim,

ECON101 applies to nearly everything we do that involves choices. Economics is just the study of both individual and aggregate human behavior, and how we judge the various tradeoffs we encounter in life.

Sorry, I just don't see it a some sort of law, it's a course taught by an instructor who may be biased, from a textbook that may be biased, and "nearly" just doesn't cover everything.

frankie_the_yankee wrote:Look at shall issue CHL laws. Before such a law is passed, LAC's either couldn't get permits or could get them with great difficulty. So few carried. (Most obey the law, right?) Of course criminals couldn't get permits either before or after shall issue is passed. So the obstacles to them carrying were not changed.

My point exactly.

frankie_the_yankee wrote: But passing shall issue lowered the barriers for LAC, and as a result more of them (usually many more) choose to carry.

Which sounds an awful lot like the obverse of the previous argument, that the criminal margin who found it harder wouldn't try. Sorry, criminals will continue to try, margin or not. And prior to CHL laws, in the not too distant past, there were few laws against carry (I can remember open carry in Texas) and all the carry laws have done is make it harder for the law abiding.

frankie_the_yankee wrote:If you make something harder, people do less of it. If you make it easier, they will do more of it. If you have two groups of people, say LAC's and criminals, and you make it easier for one while making it harder (or not changing it) for the other, more of the beneficiary group will do the thing compared to an equal or lower number of the non-beneficiary group.

And essentially nothing would change for the criminals, so the law is useless. I don't know if it's covered in ECON101, but logic says that passing laws that don't do anyting is just a waste of time.

frankie_the_yankee wrote:Now it's true that a background check requirement (for a CHL) cannot stop someone from carrying if they are determined to do so. If that's your point, point taken.

That's exactly my point, background checks only have an effect on the law abiding.

frankie_the_yankee wrote:But I can just as well argue, why have ANY laws against carry, even for criminals? They'll just break the law anyway, right? But we DO have laws against criminal carry, and for good reason. It gives us an ADDITIONAL serious crime to charge them with when we catch them doing something ELSE. So we can lock them away for a longer time.

Which is pretty much what I have been saying from the start, not "why have any laws against carry, but Vermont Style, where a criminal is breaking the law by carrying and a Law Abiding citizen is not.

It's against the law for criminals to carry, and they do, increasing licensing requirements and more background checks will have no noticeable effect on that, and will make it more inconvenient for the law abiding (can you say "infringed?") So let's get those boot camp tent cities set up in Borden, Garza, and Kent counties, Justiceburg sounds like a great place to establish an HQ.

frankie_the_yankee wrote:From ECON101, we want it to be easy for LAC's to carry, while making it hard for disqualified persons (criminals, those adjucated incompetent, etc.). So we pass a law against criminals carrying. To make the biggest difference possible, we make the sanction severe. (Note: In most states, the penalty for a criminal carrying is greater than that for an unlicensed non-criminal.) The penalty for the disqualified person becomes greater, while the "benefit" of carrying stays the same. So fewer disqualified persons can be expected to carry.

Exactly what I have been saying, and the ultimate in easy is Vermont Style carry, while background checks and licensing cannot be shown to have had much effect. What CHL has done, and it is quantifiable, is make the life of the criminal much less certain in terms of coming up against an armed response, that's the logic that got CHL passed in TX and many other states, but that was after concealed carry had already been outlawed for EVERYONE some year before. So the real goal is to go back to the way things used to be, and accomplish much more, instead of making life tougher for the law abiding to accomplish nothing.

frankie_the_yankee wrote:(FYI, in economics the phrase, "at the margin" refers to the change in output (carrying in this case) that you get for an incremental change in input (obstacles to or penalties for carrying).)[/qoute]

Having take ECON in the 80s, I was aware of that, but still don't see the benefit being worth the cost (purported obstacles for illegal carry.)

frankie_the_yankee wrote:Now let's move to the street. Absent a CHL, how is an LEO to know whether someone they encounter is legally carrying or not? Do they run a full NICS check on everybody they contact? Not sure if that's practical. And what if the computer is "down"?

If someone is caught committing a crime, they can be assumed to be carrying illegally, of course, so we have to go down from there. If there is a suspicion that they have committed a crime, then they can be assumed to be carrying illegally until things get straightened out (and I really don't like that much, considering "innocent until . . ." but we are dealing with a reality) and otherwise why would anyone assume that they are carrying illegally? Compare, cf, the newly revised "traveling" statute, where the assumption is that if you are not doing anything wrong, beyond a traffic offense, then you are legally carrying in your vehicle - IMHO that's the way ALL carry should be, nationwide.

frankie_the_yankee wrote:A CHL is a handy way of establishing that you're a good guy. And to the criminal, since he doesn't have it, his chances of bluffing or fast talking his way through a situation are reduced. His risks are incrementally greater so at the margin, he may be less likely to do it.

Wo8uld that it were so, but a CHL is a source of funds for the state and turns a right into a privilege that the state controls, nothing else, it doesn't establish a REAL assumption of being a good guy, even if some LEOs do wink at us and let us slide on some traffic offense. There are also lots of other anecdotes about LEOs handling CHLs as if they were worse than any other type of criminal. Unless and until the state, and here comes that privilege thing again, decides to codify the "A CHL holder is automatically a good guy" aspect, there will be those who see CHL holders as potential terrorists, mass murderers, or Neanderthal gunfighter wannabes, and that will include LEOs, judges, legislators, and others.

And don't even think of going to the "But it exempts you from NICS." that's a FEDERAL law, not state.

frankie_the_yankee wrote:Another thing that background checks for gun buyers certainly do is put an additional obstacle in the path of the disqualified person. (The system didn't pick up Cho, but that's just a detail. It could be tweaked, or not.)

But it's the tweaks that are the objection, that's all that Carolyn McCarthy claims she's doing, just tweaks, that's all the Brady Bunch wants to do, just a little tweak here and there. The system didn't pick up Cho because he did not feel obligated to follow the law, sure they probably should have had him in an accessible database somewhere, but there's no guarantee that he wouldn't have, or didn't, lie about other stuff and get past the background check. The 4473 is very clear, it notified him that by lying he was committing a felony, but that had no effect at all.

frankie_the_yankee wrote:As I stated, you or I can buy any gun we want, any time we want. So the "barrier" for us is low. The criminal (because he will fail the background check) is forced into the black market. So the barrier the criminal faces is higher than ours - quite a bit higher.

But the barrier to CHLs is NOT non-existent, merely low, and we have had enough anecdotes right on this forum to indicate that a CHL is not an automatic bye for a NICS check, that plenty of dealers go ahead and perform the check anyway, out of ignorance or obstinacy.

It's still an infringement.

frankie_the_yankee wrote:So for a criminal, a background check requirement makes it more difficult to buy a gun than if they could just walk into a store like we can. And it doesn't change the "benefit" they get from owning it at all. So at the margin, fewer of them can be expected to do it.

But that margin doesn't seem to translate into real life, criminals carry illegally no matter whether it's Chicago, D.C., or New York City, and those should be the proof of your thesis.

frankie_the_yankee wrote:As for VT, they and certain other states (the Dakotas for instance) have a low crime rate because they have a very peaceful population. I have spent a lot of time in VT, and I can tell you that the ability to freely carry guns has nothing to do with it. The cultural environment there seems to produce very few violent types.

And it might just be the knowledge that anyone there might be armed that keeps things that way.

frankie_the_yankee wrote:For all that VT is held up as an ideal RKBA state, very few (non-LEO) people there actually carry guns on any kind of regular basis. I would say far fewer than is normal here in TX.

As someone who has also spent a great deal of time in Vermont in the past 40 years I would have to argue with that assumption, you see, a lot of what I was doing in Vermont was going shooting with people who carried there. I even carried there a little myself.

frankie_the_yankee wrote:I come from a "discretionary" state. Believe me, living in "shall issue" TX is A MILLION TIMES BETTER.

As long as they HAVE TO sell me the gun when I pass the background check, and as long as they HAVE TO issue me a CHL when I meet the requirements, I'm good with it.

Well, they don't HAVE to sell you the gun, but that's not the point here, it's still the state ALLOWING you to exercise a privilege. Yes, I think it's a grand improvement over where I lived in NY State, but it's still not the ideal.

frankie_the_yankee wrote:ANY non-criminal, non-lunatic, non-quadriplegic can meet the requirements. The slippery slope argument doesn't apply as long as these things don't change.

And point of fact, it's the Brady Bunch that is all frothed up about slippery slopes these days. Look at how far shall issue has come in 20 years - something like 40 states now. And many states, like TX, continue to improve their laws, removing silly restrictions that may have been needed in the initial compromise (to get shall issue passed) but are now seen to be meaningless.

From the Bradys' perspective, give it 20 more years on THIS slippery slope, and EVERY state will probably be shall issue. They'll feel like vampires locked out of their crypts facing a sunrise.

Yeah, but look at where we were 50 years ago, and it's been a long hard fight to get back to where we are now, let's not give away the hard fought gains by adding silly restrictions that have no provable effect other than to make the Brady Bunch think they have taken "An important first step."

frankie_the_yankee wrote: Look up the results of "Project Exile" in Richmond, VA.

Which has little to do with the effectiveness of background checks and a lot to do with the effectiveness of additional mandatory sentences.

frankie_the_yankee wrote:Background checks might not keep criminals from carrying, but they DO keep them from LEGALLY carrying - because they can't pass the background check needed to get a CHL.

So by some magical means the lack of a background check transforms criminals carrying illegally into criminals carrying legally? We need a level check here, carrying illegally is carrying illegally whether a background check takes place or not, and carrying illegally happens in Vermont and Alaska as well as New York, Rhode Island, and Texas.

frankie_the_yankee wrote:(I'm comparing this to a situation where either, 1) no background check was required for a CHL, or 2) no CHL was required to legally carry.)

As above, I don't see the logic behind this. Are you saying that criminals routinely carry legally in Vermont?

frankie_the_yankee wrote:They also make it more difficult for people who can't pass them to buy guns.

That's questionable at best.

frankie_the_yankee wrote:You or I can walk into a store and buy whatever we want, WHENever we want. Criminals can't do that. With no background checks, they could. Sure, they'd have to lie on a form, but so what?

So they can't walk into a store and buy a gun, well actually Virginia Tech is a good example of that, Cho walked into two different stores, and lied on two different forms, committing two different felonies, and even passed two background checks, but one way or another he would have gotten guns. As someone else pointed out, it's way too easy to go buy a gun on the street, an illegal gun in an illegal transaction, and no amount of licensing and background checks is going to stop that.

frankie_the_yankee wrote:ECON101 - you make something harder to do (or more of a hassle), and at the margin, fewer people will do it. It holds true in every other field of human endeavor, so I see no reason why it wouldn't hold true in this one as well.

Sorry, ECON101 just doesn't cut it here. There have been a number of laws passed since the 60s to try to accomplish just that, and they have had no visible effect. Of course maybe that's what you mean by "on the margin" that the effect was marginal at best. Stopping mail order guns didn't change anything, stopping sales across state lines didn't change anything, Brady checks haven't changed anything, and the anti gun nuts' mantra continues, "You won't compromise."; "Just one more little law."; "Just like driver's licenses."; "Fifty caliber sniper weapons of mass destruction." and on and on and on.

Frankly it gets quite tiresome to hear it from them, but it's to be expected, we already know that appealing to logic won't work with them because they warp and twist everything to fit their own brand of logic, their own definition of common sense, their own view of reasonable, but it's really distressing to hear this coming from gun owners.

I suspect some form of Stockholm Syndrome is happening, the anti gun nuts' big lies have been repeated so often and so loud that otherwise normal people are falling for their propaganda and starting to repeat the anti rights oganizations' dogma.

wjmphoto wrote:Remove them to where? Are you going to build more prisons to take them out of society and make sure they don't get guns?

Tent cities and chain gangs would work, deportation is kind of impractical these days, but maybe forced labor overseas, and there's always branding and mutilation.

wjmphoto wrote:That's a great plan - not. If you mean remove them from being able to carry, how do you do that without a qualification process?

As you have already acknowledged the criminals won't care about the qualification process, so it acomplishes nothing more than acting as a check on the law abiding, it changes a right to a privilege granted by the state.

wjmphoto wrote:Licensing serves a two-fold purpose - it allows the state to establish a safe level of proficiency in order to carry and disqualifies people from getting a permit. Having a problem with this is less than rational.

Only if you define rational as allowing the state to have control over your rights.

wjmphoto wrote:As for Cho, he is an example of failure of government to enforce the laws on the books. Virginia chose to not report Cho, when cases like his are supposed to be on the NICS records and stop people like hom from buying the gun in the first place. The failure was not the Federal law, it was Virginia and the Supreme court ruling that said states can opt to report these things or not. When reporting to the one database that every state uses to confirm people are OK to buy a weapon is not done uniformly, that is the problem. Virginia is to blame for Cho getting a weapon - period!

Cho lied on his 4473, the FEDERAL system accomplished nothing.

wjmphoto wrote:

jimlongley wrote:

wjmphoto wrote:The only way to insure that law abising citizens are the only ones that carry a gun legally is to require background checks, like Texas. Granted it will not stop criminals from carrying because they don't worry about following the law in the first place, but it helps.

I don't see how your first sentence and second sentence even fit in the same paragraph. How does a background check ensure that only law abiding citizens are carrying? Your second sentence denies this. And then, if criminals will, by definition, disobey that law, how does it help?

It would help if you were not guilty of selective omission when you reference a quote. I stated that a background check guarantees that only law abiding citizens legally carry. Omission of that single word make the 2 sentences appear to be in contradiction of each other. Inclusion of it eliminates that contradiction. Selective quoting and omission does not prove your point in any way shape or form.

I did not selectively quote, I quoted the sentences in their entirity, the "legally" is redundant as by definition the law abiding citizens will be legally carrying under a Vermont style system, and criminals will be, by the same definition, illegally carrying and a background check does nothing to prevent that, it merely places an obstacle in the path of law abiding citizens and changes a right to a privilege administered by the state.

wjmphoto wrote:There is no logical reason to not have a process of licensing guns for the purpose of carrying them in public,

Not having an arbiter to decide whose logic is truly logical, I'll decline to argue whether there is indeed no "logical" reason not to have a licensing process. OTOH, I will argue, as I have before and seem to not be able to make the point clear, once you license the right, you have reduced it from a right to a government administered privilege. Call that illogical if you will, but I don't think so.

wjmphoto wrote:just as there is no logical reason to not have a system of licensing people in order to drive a vehicle. Unsafe drivers should be kept off the road and not allowed to drive,

Like that really works.

wjmphoto wrote:Public safety does come into play and licensing that demonstrates ability to use a firearm safely and the fact that you have not done something to lose that right is part of the equation.

Okay, comparing it to driver's licenses, as long as the government establishes public ranges as ubiquitous as public highways, then I'll go for a license to use them, but I can own any car I want without licensing it, and I can drive without a license on private property, so no license to own a gun and no license to carry in public except at the public ranges.

wjmphoto wrote:The founders set up a system of government to establish the laws of the land, establish states and let them form their own governments, and a court system to interpret the laws and their integrity. Speech, freedom of the press and other items granted in the bill of rights are not absolutes.

I wonder what "shall not be infringed meant to them.

Part of the problem is in your thought process, your statement above indicates you keep thinking of these rights as something granted, whereas the founders wrote them down as pre-existing and protected, not to be infringed upon.

wjmphoto wrote:You can't yell fire in a theater, post troop movements in the papers and many other things are restricted from these so-called absolute freedoms.

Sure you can, it's just not protected as a right.

wjmphoto wrote:No freedom and no law is absolute.

Maybe not, but pre-existing rights are.

wjmphoto wrote:But there are some very big differences in demographics that do make Vermont a great deal different that other places. They are overwhlemingly a white state with few minorities.

I don't think I even want to go there, you appear to be saying that minorities cause crime or some such.

wjmphoto wrote:There are a lot of people who hunt and teach their kids to use a weapon early on. That is not the case in a lot of these big cities in places that are much more dangerous. I try to avoid bringing cultural diversity into it, but the facts are that Vermont is not a cultrually diverse place and does no have a lot of the racial and cultural issues that places like Arizona and Texas do have.

But one thing your quick google of the demographics of Vermont didn't show you is that the overwhelming majority of the minorities in that state are concentrated in a small number of population centers, where the racial and cultural issues are very evident.

Vermont is quite culturally diverse, hippies living alongside arch conservatives, yuppies living alongside day laborers, heck they even have the supremely anti-gun Ben and Jerry's Ice Cream, and there are several American Indian tribes represented.

Yes there are people who teach their kids to hunt and handle firearms young, and there are those who teach their kids to hate guns, there are those who grow pot and those that report them, all that and more, and they still have unlicensed concealed carry that works.

wjmphoto wrote:We will have to agree to disagree on this one. I am simply of the mindset that licensing does serve a purpose, be it licensing of vehicles, drivers or people allowed to carry a weapon.

And licensing of drivers accompishes nothing, too.

wjmphoto wrote:Taking the time to take a class, show proficiency with a weapon and get a license is little enough for me to be able to legally carry a firearm.

And it's barely enough to do more than scratch the surface. If you're going to license to ensure legality and safety, you need to go a lot farther than Driver's Ed. courses do, and the CHL class today doesn't even come close to that level of thoroughness, and Driver's Ed. accomplishes little if anything.

As a law abiding citizen I should be able to carry without having to be licensed, if you catch me carrying illegally, throw the book at me, if I do it again, throw a bigger book, but there is no way that taking a course and shooting straight prove that I don't have criminal intentions and requiring a license for the law abiding does nothing to prevent criminals from carrying.

wjmphoto wrote:I simply think that we need to come down harder on people who carry without a license just as we need to be much harsher on people who drive on a suspended or revoked license.

Not much of an arguement with that, except that the current laws against driving suspended, revoked, or never licensed at all, have no effect on those who choose to ignore the laws. I listen to a scanner quite a lot, and the numbers of stops for driving without, suspended, revoked, unregistered, uninsured, etc. every day is quite amazing, and that's just in one small city. Also heard regularly, numerous repeat offenders of above. I would expect no greater compliance with any gun licensing system, and experience has borne that out.

OTOH, Vermont style carry takes away the problem of the government granting a privilege and turns it back into a right. The criminals will go on carrying illegally, just like they do now, and commiting crimes with them, just as they do now, and when caught should be treated as criminals, just as they are now, and make the sentences tougher for use of a gun in whatever crime (which has been shown to work) and a bureaucracy is eliminated, so the funds can be transferred to the tent city for criminals out in Borden County.

wjmphoto wrote:There is nothing wrong with having these laws and requirements, but there is something very wrong with not punishing those who fail to abide by the rules.

There is something very wrong with having these laws and requirements, they are an infringement on a Constitutionally guaranteed (not granted) right.

wjmphoto wrote:That is true, but you can make it more difficult and stop them from doing it legally.

The problem is that they are not doing it legally in the first place. Taking Cho as an example, he committed a felony by lying on his form 4473. Didn't stop him, and he wasn't legal. The law didn't accomplish anything.

And not one law in place today can be show to make it any more difficult for any criminal, mental defective, druggie, or drunk, to obtain a gun, so unless you are arguing for complete and absolute control of access to firearms and abolition of private possession, by the government (something which is also a demonstrable failure), your thesis is defective from the start.

wjmphoto wrote: While it is a right, it is not one that is open, nor should it be open, to everyone. Convicted felons should not have the right to carry open or concealed or even own a firearm. Spousal abusers should not be allowed to carry or own a weapon either. People with serious mental illness and those with drug and alcohol addictions should not be allowed to carry.

You're using the same null arguments that are the anti-gun nuts' favorites. Convicted felons already don't have the right, but that doesn't stop them, Spousal Abusers hardly give the fact that they are violating many laws a thought and, as evidenced by Cho's rampage, the laws don't seem to have much effect on drunks, druggies, or nut cases. Yes, it is a right which should be available to a subset of "everyone" but the definition and regulation of the subset is where the problem lie. My feeling, and I know others feel the same, is that the subset should be defined by elimination, not qualification, that is; remove the criminals, etc, and the rest of us will take care of ourselves. Don't license the law abiding.

wjmphoto wrote:The only way to insure that law abising citizens are the only ones that carry a gun legally is to require background checks, like Texas. Granted it will not stop criminals from carrying because they don't worry about following the law in the first place, but it helps.

I don't see how your first sentence and second sentence even fit in the same paragraph. How does a background check ensure that only law abiding citizens are carrying? Your second sentence denies this. And then, if criminals will, by definition, disobey that law, how does it help?

wjmphoto wrote:I have no problem with presenting a permit to an officer if requested to show that I am a law abiding citizens and have gone through the process. The question is why would anyone have a problem with this except those who would be denied a permit in the first place because of background or disqualifying factors?

As long as the process exists, I don't have a problem with it either, but it sure reminds me of "May I see your papers please?" In Vermont and Alaska you are presumed to be a law abiding citizen unless you prove otherwise (innocent until proven guilty?) and only then are you prohibited from carrying a gun, and if you are caught the penalties are commensurately high. I would rather the process did not exist. (more on that later.)

wjmphoto wrote:Yes, owning a gun is a constitutionally guaranteed right, but so is voting and the state government has a right to disqualify people from voting based on felony convictions as well. All rights are not absolute and do not apply to all people.

I would argue with that too. The Constitution, as written, sees those rights it protects, in combination with the Bill of Rights and other Amendments as absolute, inviolate, applying to everyone, all people. Of course the Constitution had to be amended to make everyone a little more global than the everyone that was first written into the document to begin with, but that amendment only made the set broader, including women, people of color, non-property owners , and others who had found themselves disenfranchised by legal wrangling and interpretive spin.

That there are those not competent to exercise their rights was recognized right from the start, and has been held to include felons and various others by interpretation and judicial fiat over the years. It's really kind of too bad that the founders did not do more to codify some of this stuff, I think they probably thought that not allowing people who displayed no ability or desire to properly exercise their rights was just common sense.

wjmphoto wrote:Using Vermont style carry is not necessarily feasible in other parts of the nation.

Sure it is, and it worked fine until people started insisting that governments should not "allow" people to have guns.

wjmphoto wrote:The idea of let everyone carry and sort out the bad guys caarrying guns after the fact just does not work in larger and more densely populated cities and parts of the country that inherently have higher crime rates than Vermont ever had in the first place.

I don't see how that's any different than what we have now, except that those of us who are preternaturally inclined to be law abiding will get the necessary license, that "allows" us to exercise a right, while the criminals will go ahead and carry regardless of the law. All the CHL "permission" does is give the government control over a right, turning it into a privilege, which they can modify as they see fit (as exemplified by regular changes to the CHL laws and rules)

BTW, having spent a great deal of time in Vermont, I can assure you that their big cities, although not quite as large as others, still have big city woes, and their rural areas are not any different than other rural areas except that they tend to be more vertical.

wjmphoto wrote:Let's face it, I disagree with the right of the government to deny due process to anyone, but a lot of people out there think that it is justified under certain circumstances.

And that does not make them right. The government only gets away with what we let it, and once we let them do something it's hard to make them stop. It's that old thing about not letting the camel's nose into the tent, the rest will inevitably follow.

wjmphoto wrote:A lot of people see the 2nd amendment as inviolate and think it should be applied to everyone without restriction, but fail to agree that the 5th amendment applies to everyone and is just as inviolate. Personally, the right to a fair trial is an absolute requirement of a free nation.

Which also doesn't make them right. The first eight amendments are pretty specific about the rights that pre-exist the document and are meant to be guarded by them. Each is pretty much, by the definition contained in each, inviolate right from the start, and the meanings have once again only really changed with spin and fiat.

BTW, don't you mean the Sixth. which guarantees the right to a fair trial, and not the Fifth, which guarantees due process in reaching the trial?

wjmphoto wrote:Once you have had your fair trial and have been convicted, your other rights as a citizen, like the right to own a firearm can and should be restricted as you have been proven to be incapable of living by the rules of society.

Pretty much my way of thinking, not quite the whole thing, see above, but close.

The dichotomy comes with how we prevent those criminals from doing more illegal things while not restricting the rights of the law abiding. Of course we could go back to branding, wearing scarlet letters, placing people on display when convicted so that everyone would know who they were and know that they were not supposed to be availing themselves of rights that they had, by their own actions, made themselves ineligible for.

We have tried permits for guns, and have pretty much demonstrated that that doesn't work, and permits for carry go right with that. We had a ten year experiment outlawing various guns and cosmetic features that failed miserably, and prior to that other prohibitions have similarly failed, including the initial capital Prohibition.

What we need to do is recognize that criminals will be criminals without regard for what society dictates, and punish them appropriately, and the rest of us should live without the government (actually other people) interfering by "allowing" us to exercise our rights.

[/philosophical]

wjmphoto wrote:allowed to do either.

There's that word again. When we let the state allow us to exercise a right it becomes a privilege and the state can take it away.

Vermont style carry.

BTW, you can open carry in NY City, if you have the permit. And I have open carried in NY City and New Jersey, in my Navy dungarees, while on active duty, while on official duty.