While I agre with the thrust of your arguement, I would like to point out that traffic laws did indeed exist long before the automobile, or even the USA did. Licensure requirements existed as well.The Annoyed Man wrote:I call "Red Herring" on two points:Headless Roland wrote:I seem to recall reading that in the beginning of the 20th century there were no traffic laws or license/insurance requirements until later on when the automobile did finally emerge as victorious over animal drawn carriages. Were these initially seen as "infringements" or as threats to our freedom?
- The specific right to drive a motor vehicle is not enshrined in the Constitution, whereas the 2nd Amendment specifically states that the RKBA shall not be infringed.
- Even so, the new traffic laws (which did NOT initially require insurance, by the way) did not restrict what kind of vehicle you could buy, or how many passengers it could carry, or how much engine displacement you could be allowed to have. They only codified responsible use from a public safety perspective. We don't allow you to shoot your pistola into the air on New Year's Eve in the middle of the town square either, not even in the most firearms enlightened states in the union. Public safety firearms laws only become illegitimate when they infringe on the right to keep and bear them.
I do consider the state allowing us to carry after obtaining a license to be an insidious form of gun control, but that is a vast improvement over the past. We came from no carry at all, to liberalized carry, and we have even incrementally chipped away at the restrictions even more and will continue to do so.
The driver's license arguement, as well as vehicle registration is intellectually dishonest, there is no comparison between licensing the use of public highways and licensing carry of a firearm (concealed or not) unless and until the government builds ranges for us to use as ubiquitously as the public highway system. You do not have to have a license to driv e a car, just to use it on a public highway, and you do not have to register a vehicle to own it, except on a public highway.