I have a feeling this piece is going to win me very few friends among the Armed Intelligentsia, but as I have said before, I am a completely no-compromise kind of guy when it comes to civil rights. And I fully agrees with L. Neil Smith when he says the freedom to own and carry the weapon of your choice is a natural, fundamental, and inalienable human, individual, civil, and Constitutional right — subject neither to the democratic process nor to arguments grounded in social utility.[1] This is why it really offends my izzat to see conservatives rejoicing in court rulings that deny people their right to keep and bear arms, and mocking the antis for not joining in the celebration . . .
Case in point is Raquel Okyay’s piece on the 10th Circuit Court ruling in United States v. Huitron-Guizar:
On May 7, the US Court of Appeals in the District of Wyoming affirmed a lower court’s decision that illegal immigrants do not have a right to own firearms under the US Constitution. …
A ruling being hailed by many as a “no brainer” since persons who are here illegally do not and should not possess Second Amendment rights; yet barely a mention from the anti-gun lobby even though the law keeps guns out of the hands of would be dangerous criminals.
Okay folks, I say this to the antis and now I’m saying it to you: you can’t have it both ways. Either the freedom to own and carry the weapon of your choice is a natural, fundamental, and inalienable human, individual, civil, and Constitutional right — subject neither to the democratic process nor to arguments grounded in social utility,[2] or it is a privilege, granted to the individual by the government and subject to revocation via the democratic process or arguments grounded in social utility.
According to the Wall Street Journal (as quoted by ImmigrationDirect.com), Huitron-Guizar came to America when he was three, had lived his entire life in Wyoming and had no criminal record. Now I know people are going to say that he was a criminal by virtue of his being here illegally, but he was brought here when he was three years old.
Similar to the way all ‘persons,’ whether non citizens or illegal residents, have a Fifth Amendment right to an indictment of a grand jury before being held for a capital crime, Huitron-Guizar sought to possess the right to own and carry firearms as guaranteed by the Second Amendment, yet the court found that ‘the people’ phrased in the Second Amendment has a narrower confine than the term ‘persons’ in the Fifth Amendment.
And this is supposed to be a good thing?!? I don’t know about anyone else, but I believe the courts should read the Second Amendment at least as broadly as they read the rest. After all, what part of shall not be infringed is so hard to interpret?
The court also found that it is incumbent upon Congress to furnish laws that keep “instruments of deadly force from those deemed irresponsible or dangerous” and ultimately “crime control and public safety are indisputably important interests.”
Again, we are supposed to be in favor of this? This is the exact same kind of argument the antis use when they want to ban “high capacity” magazines or widen the list of prohibited persons to include “suspected terrorists” or “mentally ill” who haven’t been adjudicated a threat to anyone. Raquel even acknowledges this in following paragraphs:
Brady campaign president Dan Gross encourages the public to sign a statement ‘Against Arming Dangerous People’ for submittal to congress. The statement defines dangerous people as: Convicted felons, convicted domestic abusers, terrorists, and people found to be dangerously mentally ill.
Yet, there are plentiful laws to support gun restrictions from the four identified groups. Gross states the obvious restrictions that most Americans agree upon in an attempt to create an illusion that these restrictions do not exist. Rather, he is trying to convince us of the oxymoron that gun control laws that harass innocent Americans actually protect innocent Americans, when we know they do not.
Any time we allow that there are “some people” who shouldn’t have guns, we strengthen the antis’ arguments and weaken our position. How can we be opposed to “closing the gun show loophole” if we agree that illegals shouldn’t have guns (ignoring the fact that the proposed “loophole closing” legislation would imprison show organizers for actions completely beyond their control).
If there are “some people” who shouldn’t have guns, we can’t oppose the Lautenberg amendment (ignoring the fact that restraining orders are commonly abused in nasty divorces).
If there are “some people” who shouldn’t have guns, we can’t oppose mental health checks for gun owners (according to the CDC more than 10% of Americans take anti-depressants and over 50% of the population over 40 has taken them at one time or another).
No, as National Gun Rights Examiner David Codrea says: If someone can’t be trusted with a gun then they can’t be trusted without a custodian, and we allow incremental reduction of our rights at our peril.