Beiruty wrote:I am NOT starting a flame war. However, The 2ndA, starts with "A well regulated......
CHL as well as gun ownership should be somehow regulated as it is high responsibility. "Wackos with guns" are real the enemy of our gun rights. It is just fresh in our mind what Loranza did of uncalculated harm to our rights.
Beiruty, In Arizona and Vermont (the former a conservative to libertarian state, and the latter a liberal to socialist state), where no permits are needed to carry in the open or concealed in either state, and where there is no state mandated registration of firearms or other "controls" beyond the 4473 we are all required to fill out, people manage not to get sideways and gun each other down, while freely exercising that part of the amendment which says "
SHALL NOT BE INFRINGED." Adam Lanza lived in Connecticut, a state which
already had onerous gun laws on the books, and yet those laws did nothing to prevent his depredations. In the wake of that shooting, Connecticut passed even more onerous laws against firearms. Does anybody seriously think that those laws will prevent another Lanza?
In the late 18th century/early 19th century usage of the language, the term "well regulated" referred to logistical aspects of blending local militias with national armies; and it meant that the locals needed to have ownership of and access to the same kinds of weaponry as one another, AND that the active duty militaries had at their disposal. Indeed, at that time there was no law against private citizens owning artillery pieces—the high "buy-in" price being the primary "control" on ownership. That high expense kept private ownership low, but there were no regulations against it. In other words, the free market determined whether or not you could own a cannon just like the boys down at the local fort had. The term "regulation" had more of the same meaning as we would use to refer to a properly-timed internal combustion engine, in which "regulated" means that all cylinders are firing at the same number of degrees from top dead center, etc., etc.
The phrase "well-regulated militia" has been as abused by the left in this country as much as has the term "shall not be infringed," and we need to be diligent in preserving the original intent of those words. That original intent was NOT to create an elite subset of the common man.
There is some merit in the idea that those who possess a CHL belong to an "upper stratum" of the law-abiding, in the sense that CHLs have had to prove certain things about their character and past history in order to obtain a CHL; and that sense of belonging to part of the "upper stratum of the law-abiding" is born out by the statistical evidence proving that CHLs not only commit crimes at a lower rate than the general population, but we commit them at an even lower rate than LEOs.
But such evidence is never required as proof that we have a right to freedom of speech, religion, and association; freedom from having soldiers quartered by force in our homes; freedom from unreasonable searches and seizures; freedom from self-incrimination; a right to a speedy trial and confrontation of witnesses, etc., etc., etc. TODAY, we ascribe ALL of these things in courtroom settings to people whom we are PRETTY sure are guilty of crimes, with the exception of increasingly intrusive violations of the 4th Amendment, and yet we require a common citizen to PROVE his 2nd Amendment right to keep and bear arms before we will A) sell him a gun; and B) allow him to carry it.
I am not required to prove
to government that I am not a criminal
or a deadbeat in order to attend the church of my choice, to vote the way I want to, to join whatever political party resonates with my beliefs, to tell a local National Guard NCO or officer to go fly a kite if he wants me to put his squad up in my home, to tell a cop who knocks on my door to come back with a warrant before I let him inside, to refuse to answer any question which I believe will entrap me into a (right or wrong) confession of having committed an illegal act, to insist on legal representation and a speedy trial by a jury of my peers and the right to confront any witnesses against me, and on and on and on.
I am not required to be a part of any "elite" to have and to claim these rights. ONLY the 2nd Amendment is treated this way (and to a lesser extent, the 4th Amendment). Suzanna Gratia Hupp had it exactly right when she said:
"How a politician stands on the Second Amendment tells you how he or she views you as an individual... as a trustworthy and productive citizen, or as part of an unruly crowd that needs to be lorded over, controlled, supervised, and taken care of."
Now, all of the above is a separate issue from whether or not incrementalism is the proper and/or
realistic way to restore rights which were incrementally lost. But unless you
begin ALWAYS with the presumption that the 2nd Amendment language must be understood within the literal context and use of language in which it was written, then you will ALWAYS end up losing incrementally more of your rights—because the PRIMARY ARGUMENT used by the forces of darkness in this debate is that the Founders did not intend the 2nd Amendment to apply to any firearm that wasn't a cap and ball muzzle loading pistol or rifle or smoothbore musket. That is a very difficult argument to make in the face of documented evidence of the private ownership of artillery pieces.
Yes, your CHL distinguishes you as a person who has less baggage in their past than a common criminal, but I
personally know people with significant criminal records in their pasts, who cannot legally buy or carry a gun today, who are powerfully anointed by God today and who live far more moral lives today than some of the members of this board......and I say that without meaning to sound judgmental. I have a good friend who is a pastor whose special ministry is people in hospice, ministering the gospel to them as they are living out their last days. He is a kind and gentle and moral man. He also was busted in his youth on a felony drug possession charge and served some time up at the big house. I won't go into any more detail about him, but suffice it to say that his church, of which he is a staff member, was in the national headlines some years ago for a mass-shooting by a disgruntled member. But my friend can't carry or own a firearm........because he isn't part of some self-congratulatory "elite."
My friends, be very, VERY careful about whom you label and why, and about whether or not you advocate for the loss of their rights, using current law to justify your own membership in an elite at the expense of other equally deserving people. Personally, I dislike the idea of belonging to an elite. It's a source of false pride for me.....a sin against which
I struggle every day.
We either have rights, or we don't. Period. How we approach the restoration of rights which have been infringed is a matter of political strategy, but
it is not a matter of whether some deserve rights and others don't!!! THAT is a separate argument having to do with due-process before the law; but the
law must be predicated upon something higher, and that is the Constitution of the United States of America. And the
Constitution either says that the right shall not be infringed, or it says that the right may be infringed. My copy says it shall not. It doesn't say that it can be infringed because I owe some back taxes or have unpaid child support. Being a dirtbag doesn't mean you don't have rights. Dirtbags still have the right of free speech. Dirtbags still have the right to a speedy trial before a jury of their peers. They still have a right against unreasonable search and seizure. Dirtbags have rights too, whether or not you or I like it. The 2nd Amendment is not only a
human right, it is a right of citizenship, and it is the only one in which the current state of the law is that we have to PROVE ourselves "worthy" in order to exercise it.
There's something wrong with that, particularly when there are no prosecutions to speak of in documented cases of known felons voting from prison.
Now, the current law being what it is, I agree that incrementalism is the most efficient and lasting way to win back the full expression of the 2nd Amendment right. But I will will not agree to think that I am a better person than someone else simply because I have a CHL and he doesn't. The fact of the matter is that we represent maybe 2%-3% of the state's population, and SURELY among the remaining 97%-98% of the population, there are many many more people who are at least our moral equals, who have simple decided not to get a CHL. Therefore, the possession of a CHL is no guarantee that you actually belong to an
elite.........evidenced by the fact that, even though CHLs commit crimes at a lower rate than non-CHLs,
some CHLs still commit crimes, while the majority of non-CHLs don't commit any crimes at all.
Isn't it just irritating as all get out that people who actually know nothing about a subject will claim expertise in that subject, and then insist on that "expertise" being acknowledged in legal definitions?