“It must be much harder for people who shouldn’t have weapons to get them,” newsday.com’s editorial board opines. “That would make it a bit harder to purchase weapons even for people who can be trusted with them. And far harder for anyone to get the most dangerous military-style weapons. When liberties such as the right to bear arms and the right to not be slaughtered conflict, a balance must be found.”
The right not to be slaughtered? I guess I must have missed that one when I read the Constitution. Now that I think about it, if there’s a right not to be slaughtered, isn’t that covered by the Second Amendment? Anyway, how’s this for balance:
- No one should be able to buy a gun without a background check, not from a gun show, the internet, a buddy or a family member. On average, Chicago has a gunshot victim every three hours and a gunshot homicide every day. About 10,000 Americans are killed by someone else with a gun every year. A lot of the guns are availabile because of background-check loopholes and lax state gun laws.
- No one with a known mental illness, like Virginia Tech shooter Seung-Hui Cho, should be allowed to buy a gun.
- No one who has been on a terrorist watch list, like Orlando killer Omar Mateen, or a no-fly list, should be able to buy a gun unless fully cleared.
- Semi-automatic rifles with military-style accessories of the type banned from 1994 to 2004 should be placed under the same restrictions as weapons covered by the 1934 law.
- No one should be able to buy huge magazines like the ones used in the Sandy Hook school killings.
- There should be a waiting period of at least several days for gun purchases, which could help prevent impulse attacks and 20,000 suicides a year committed with guns.
- The law should demand that anyone whose gun is stolen report that theft.
See anything Constitutional? Me neither. And why’d they stop there? Once you support removing due process with the “No Fly, No Buy” law, why not make the 4th and 5th Amendment-trampling California Gun Violence Restraining Order a federal law? Oh, hell, just come out of the disarmament closet and be done with it. So we can be done with you.
Meanwhile and in any case, we could shoot holes in each of these items on Newsboy’s civilian disarmament wish list, lovingly titled Higher costs on the most dangerous guns could reduce bloodshed. Suffice it to say, the right to keep and bear arms doesn’t depend on arguments based on social utility. And it’s good to see all the bad ideas gathered in one place!
Even without considering the [lack of] merit for each proposal, firearms freedom fence straddlers can see that gun control advocates support any law degrading or destroying Americans’ natural, civil and Constitutionally protected right to keep and bear arms. Even if it makes gun rights just “a bit harder” to exercise, like, say, the de facto ban on concealed carry in New York City? Absolutely.