Security Advantage - Is gun control a violation of the Bill of Rights? How can public safety and personal rights coexist?

Is gun control a violation of the Bill of Rights? How can public safety and personal rights coexist?

Public Comments

All rights have limits on them and responsibilities that come with them. You cannot refuse to give your child medical treatment because of your religion. You cannot incite a riot or yell "fire" in a crowded theater when there is no fire. The second amendment should be no different.
IMHO, yes, all gun laws are a violation of Bill or Rights. However, 9 octogenarians, isolated from society, have ruled on various occasions that controls are permissible. This same court has ruled that the police have NO DUTY to provide protection for a citizen and cannot be sued for failure to do so.
1. Yes. 2. Why is self defense inimicable to public safety? Police can't be everywhere.
No, it isn't. You should probably READ the Bill of Rights if you cannot understand why... In the 13th Amendment (bear with me here) it says that "Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.", so slavery is illegal EXCEPT as punishment, etc., etc....this is how & why "chain gangs" are legal.....what the 2nd Amendment 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.", so in fact, it grants NO right to freely own uncontrolled arms outside of a "well-regulated militia" To honestly believe that gun control is a violation of the Bill of Rights, you must also believe that owning slaves is not a violation. You must interpret law in the spirit & time & context in which it was written for it to be of any value...
In the second amendment it says the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed. That is the law. What is an infringement? How about a restriction, impediment, delay, or control?
All rights do have limitations on them. The most basic is that your right ends when it intrudes upon the right of another. So coexistence is not only possible, but necessary. Our system is predicated on the most basic principle that individual liberty is paramount, but the public good must be maintained. So all controls and limitations on rights have to be weighed between the two. When individual right intrudes upon public safety, then it must be limited; otherwise you have anarchy and mob riots. When public safety intrudes upon individual liberty, it too must be limited; otherwise you have a police state where the individual lives only to serve the state. So the arguments about what COULD happen, what MIGHT be, what if, are not sufficient to curtail individual liberty in exchange for public safety. Doesn't keep laws from being made on that basis, of course, and it also doesn't prevent legal challenge over their constitutionality. Laws should be designed to affect an individual action that will DIRECTLY affect the public safety, not about actions which could, may, possibly, eventually domino to result in some future scenario. Yes, I might agree that there are way too many guns in the hands of criminals on the streets these days, but how does it guarantee public safety to limit legal gun buyers to only one a month? By definition, if they are LEGAL buyers, then they are not the ones committing the crimes, and limiting them will not reduce the crime already going on. There must be a balance between individual rights and public safety based upon intelligent agreement, not radical emotions akin to wishing upon a star. For me, if I were presented with only two extreme choices, total anarchy or total state control, I'd opt for total anarchy.
This is a good question. The populace and neutral, informed courts (not a few elitist, busy body legislators or activists judges in govt.) need to weigh such matters as gun control. Limiting or denying the rights of the mentally ill (... not currently institutionalized...) and criminals (... who've served their time...) makes sense. However, I do believe that such folks should at least have an opportunity to challenge any denial (no matter how ridiculous their request may initially seem). Having a label slapped on you by others or not having reasonable consideration of having a record expunged is heavy handed and lazy. Zero tolerance means zero thought and consideration. The chronically and/or dangerously mentally ill and violent and/or habitual offenders do not warrant such consideration. Reasonable expectations of training and licensure are fine with me (e.g., safety classes and training that would then allow for application of a CCW permit). Broad, intrusive govt. intrusion (mandates on how private firearms can be stored, "magic" bullet stamping and draconian registration laws and punishing legal owner and manufactures for theft and crime they had no knowledge or influence over is asinine). States should be able to handle this (... the gun control...) issue. Any national govt. wants the general citizeny disarmed in order to protect its own self interests (i.e., its continued existence and ability to hold sway over the masses without question). Check out the purpose of the Second Amendment from the authors and their contemporaries (see link). There is a fine balance to be had with the issue of gun control. I don't want nuts and thugs LEGALLY armed (what is so hard for the federal govt. to grasp about disarming those who shouldn't be armed in the first place?). The problem is, the govt. wants to call EVERYBODY a nut and/or thug. Per current Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, pretty much everyone who owns a gun or knows how to use a gun is suspect (veterans, hunters, NRA members, any gun owner who didn't vote democrat). I'll throw my hat in the ring with Robert Heinlein: "An armed society is a polite society." There is no easy "yes" or "no" answer to your question. The right to own and be able to use firearms is damn important, but there does need to be serious and reasonable consideration of when limits apply. I don't trust the federal government (and some state governments) not to want to squash this particular right altogether. Vigilance, clear thinging and loudly calling "BS!" when any power grab is clearly "BS" needs to counter any entity's desire to curb what is clearly an individual right with a clear intent.
Gun Control Defined....... A theory espoused by some people; who claim to believe, that a violent predator who ignores the laws prohibiting them from robbing, raping, kidnapping, torturing and killing their fellow human beings will obey a law telling them that they cannot own a gun. You want to fix the problem with "gun violence" you need to fix people. Gun laws and control effect only law abiding citizens... Thomas Jefferson said it best: "The laws that forbid the carrying of arms ... disarm only those who are neither inclined nor determined to commit crimes. Can it be supposed that those who have the courage to violate the most sacred laws of humanity ... will respect the less important and arbitrary ones ... Such laws make things worse for the assaulted and better for the assailants, they serve rather to encourage than to prevent homicides, for an unarmed man may be attacked with greater confidence than an armed man." — Thomas Jefferson
While rights do have limitations on them, the Center for Disease Control did a three year study and they couldn't conclude that gun control has any positive impact on crime. So the question is moot in my opinion. If criminals obeyed laws or were much affected by laws it might be different but only punishment effects them. Gun control LAWS by definition only affect the LAW ABIDING. So with over 20,000 gun control laws on the books we see no positive inpact on crime. What good will more laws do? On the other hand they can easily keep the law abiding defenseless and do more harm that good. Common sense dictates that if you do the same old thing, you wil get the same old resutls. So adding the same old tired gun laws will not resutl in less now any more than they have in years past. On the other hand, the more guns in the hands of the law abiding, the less crime you are likely to have. That's just common sense. But it's been researched to the Nth degree by Gary Kleck and John Lott.
Yes. It is a violation of the Bill of Rights. You can disagree with the pro-gun movement, but whether or not gun control is an infringement to the right of the people to keep and bear arms is not debatable. Gun control IS against the constitution. That being said, I do understand the need for basic rules concerning the gun(HOLD ON FELLOW SECOND AMENDMENT LOVERS... Lemme explain). In the same context that you should not be allowed to yell FIRE in a crowded theatre, you should not be able to brandish a gun in a crowded park and fire wildly into air. Just as you cannot verbally harrass people with words, you cannot point your gun and otherwise harrass people with guns... The problem with gun control is that it has gone beyond laws that say "You may not use a cityscape as a backstop for your rifle practice". Imagine if you needed to get a drivers license in every state you wanted to drive... Imagine if you needed to pay a 200 dollar tax to register every book/scroll/article that was transfered to you... Imagine if it was illegal to speak about disagreeable politics within 100 yards of a school zone... Imagine if you needed a federal speech license to publish even something as simple as this yahoo answer on the internet... imagine a complete ban on the mere casual discussion of illegal activities... It would bring uproar. We would fall into revolution.. Yet firearm owners have to deal with it every day. We need a license to carry in every state. You need a 200 dollar tax to transfer an SBR/SBS. Even with a license we cannot carry with X yards of a school zone in many states. We need federal firearms licenses to manufacture even something as incomplete as an ar-15 lower. We have a complete ban on machine guns. And even among the so called sensible laws there are stupid arbitrary laws that affect us deeply and daily... An unregistered AR-15 with a 16 inch barrel is perfectly legal but an unregistered AR-15 with a 15.5 inch barrel is an automatic 10 years in prison.. there's an incredibly intricate system defining what weapons are and aren't illegal, required registration, and require taxes. People gets screwed by these tedious laws every day simply because the laws are so damn complicated and so damn disorganised that a modifications as simple as a forward grip on a handgun somehow in the laws eyes converts it to a short barreled rifle, or an AOW and *BAM* automatic 10 years.. Innocent people being imprisoned and taxed by these laws that say that a AR pistol with a large buffer tube is okay but installing a stock turns it into an SBR and needs either a 200 dollar tax and registrations, or there goes another 10 years of your life... Meanwhile, I hardly think the average criminal with these so called federally regulated devices know what the abbreviations FFL AOW SBS SBR CCP mean let alone the forms you need to fill out to obtain them.
I'd like to focus on the second half of your question. You imply that we should take it for granted that gun control laws enhance public safety. I find this statement questionable. There are numerous references to countries becoming less safe after passing strict gun control laws. In fact some of our most dangerous cities in the US have very strict laws. If, in fact, fewer gun control laws actually increases public safety by inhibiting the behavior of criminals, then your question is moot. In that case the bill of rights, and public safety actually enhance one another.