[B5JMS] Gore's speech re civil liberty

[b5jms at cs.columbia.edu]

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From: Derek Balling <dredd at megacity.org>
Date: Mon, 24 Nov 2003 13:24:48 +0000 (UTC)
Lines: 62

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In article <20031123050949.08118.00000333 at mb-m03.aol.com>, Jms at B5
<jmsatb5 at aol.com> wrote:
> Let's be more specific.  What it actually says is:
> 
> "A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state,
> the
> right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed."
> 
> First, the rights invoked refer specifically to "a well regulated militia." 
> Anti-gun law advocates tend to omit that part of the sentence out, as you did
> just above.

And gun-control people tend to (a) over emphasize it, (b) quietly
ignore that the word "regulated" in the 18th century meant something
quite different than it does today (it meant "trained", not
"controlled")

I also find it very odd that gun-control advocates are very quick to
point out the "militia" clause, but very lax about noticing that it
still says "the people"... does the "right of the people to assemble"
also only apply to state-sanctioned "free speech units" the way
gun-control advocates often profess gun rights only belong to
state-sanctioned units?

> Second, most of what's been advocated is simple gun registration, which dose
> not interfere itself with the ability to keep and bear arms.

Ask the California residents who were forced to register their firearms
and assured "we're NEVER going to use those lists as a checklist to go
confiscate them later", and then several years later found those
registrations being used for *precisely* that purpose.

We just want to keep track of the Jews, honest, we're NEVER going to
use those registrations for anything else, honest injun.

Registration, throughout history, seems to be shortly thereafter
followed by the destruction of that which was registered, because now
it's so damn easy to find 'em. :-)

> Third, bear in mind that some of the Al Qaeda docs that surfaced during the
> campaign refer to the fact that those working inside the US should purchase
> guns legally, not buy them off the street, because they're so easy to obtain
> here.  The resultant theory is that good gun registration laws could help to
> prevent the use of such guns by, say, terrorists.

That's a good theory, but it just doesn't hold up. If a terrorist can
construct a pretty decent fake identity -or- steal an existing
identity, they'll happily be able to register the document using either
a constructed or stolen identity, completely circumventing the intent
of those laws.

So, since registration is completely useless in that respect, why
hassle the law-abiding citizen, especially given the history of
registration?



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From: jmsatb5 at aol.com (Jms at B5)
Date: Tue, 25 Nov 2003 12:40:51 +0000 (UTC)
Lines: 29

>That's a good theory, but it just doesn't hold up. If a terrorist can
>construct a pretty decent fake identity -or- steal an existing
>identity, they'll happily be able to register the document using either
>a constructed or stolen identity, completely circumventing the intent
>of those laws.
>
>So, since registration is completely useless in that respect, why
>hassle the law-abiding citizen, especially given the history of
>registration?

Except that your premise is false.  The terrorists who hit on 9/11 rented
apartments, vans, bought tickets all *in their own real names*.  So we haven't
seen that happen.

Also, the majority of guns that are used in daily crime were stolen from
law-abiding citizens in household robberies or the like.  Being able to track
back a stolen weapon could be of great use in legitimate enforcement.  

 jms

(jmsatb5 at aol.com)
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