Wednesday, May 28, 2008

What the Brits Have to Say: Gun Control



I am interested in what any of you have to say on the matter, but can't help but pitch in these two cents: the fact of the matter is that there are very few who would earnestly advocate a complete lack of regulation with respect to all types of arms. Ask yourself whether you truly believe that there ought to be zero laws addressing matters related to arms within the ilk of ICBM's. So if you at least admit that much, you already believe in drawing a controlling line with respect to arms.

Similarly, it would be absurd to place a federal, bar-none ban on all arms. If this is your position you are in the negligible minority, but I am yet interested in your argument.

Anyway now that most of us are all on the same page (namely, in favor of "Gun Control" generally), we can argue about where to draw that line. But please, don't beat me over the head with something as overly simplistic, vague, and unhelpful as "gun control is unconstitutional" (whatever that means).

As a side note, I found this second amendment commentary pretty interesting - both informational and insightful.

8 comments:

  1. Gun control is unconstitutional (that means its not the government's role to keep me from owning guns).

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  2. What's up Brandon. I am interested in what you have to say - are you in the camp that believes that it is not the government's job to keep you from owning any types of arms?

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  3. Yes. Including Nukes. But I will elaborate later if necessary.

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  4. In short, the 2nd Amendment was designed to protect against a tyrannical government. If the government can own a nuke, so can a private citizen. Weapons of mass destruction, such as canons, were around when the Constitution was written. If they meant to exclude such weapons from the 2nd Amendment, they could have.

    I haven't had time to read it, but you may find this article interesting:
    Toward a Universal Libertarian Theory of Gun (Weapon) Control

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  5. Gotcha, thanks; that makes sense. I can definitely respect the defensibility of that position.

    Nevertheless I maintain a few differences with it, and/but really my comments here are geared toward those individuals, that likely compose the majority of the citizenship in America by my humble estimation, that are unthoughtfully (in my humble judgment) in favor of one type of regulation or another with respect to one type of arm or another, yet make undefined, broad-sweeping, and ill-informed claims about how "Gun Control" (which is oft undefined, or ill-defined), is "against" (typically unexplained or poorly explained) the 2nd Amendment (the interpretation of which is not expounded upon, not informed by its historical context, not supported with any rationale, and the legitimate controversy over which is utterly and ignorantly unrecognized).

    I guess my point to such is that they are already in favor of arms regulation, and it might significantly morph their perspective on pending legislation to be honest about that with themselves and others.

    I guess that this change could go one of two basic routes: either they could become more politically libertarian, like you, by withdrawing their stance on arms regulations, allowing for the governmentally unmitigated private ownership of nukes and tanks.

    Or they could head toward what I would call a more moderate political position on the matter, like me, by thinking along the lines of

    'Well I suppose that since I already believe that laymen in certain situations should not be allowed to purchase things like biological weapons, so perhaps it's not the end of the world to also favor reasonable regulation and/or tracking of automatic weapons designed to rapidly and efficiently slaughter human begins with ease. Perhaps we should require permits that entail a background check and a safety course, or maybe we could simply photocopy driver's licenses upon purchase, or... well shoot, there sure are a whole lot of variables that lend themselves to a variety of nuanced positions on this matter; I'm so glad I stopped to think for more than two minutes about the details of my position concerning deadly weapons. Thanks, Louis! Have a high-five! '

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  6. Thanks for the link, Dave; I heard the news. The ruling is exactly in line with the thrust of this post. Phew! indeed.

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