Pelican Parts Forums - Supremes will decide DC v. Heller today?

Shaun - the 7-day waiting period serves no practical purpose. If the guy with the 410 wants to commit mayhem NOW, and wants/needs a gun, he'll obtain a gun illegally.

Another for instance: NY passed a law requiring all new guns sold in the state be "fingerprinted" -- i.e. a spent casing and fired bullet had to be submitted to the NYSP to be kept on file so it could be compared against evidence found at crime scenes. As anyone who knows anything about guns knows, you can change this "fingerprint" very easily, and after a few hundred rounds the resulting bullet/casing will likely look very different from the first bullet/casing fired from the gun.

Notwithstanding these obvious shortcomings, the state of New York has spent billions on creating, implementing, enforcing and databasing (new word?) this program, which effort has solved exactly zero crimes, and is likely to maintain its unblemished record of inefficacy. Not to mention, of course that this burden will almost certainly never prevent a gun crime or a gun from being used in a crime.

To Rick's point, the Bill of Rights has been almost universally construed to restrain the states as well as the federal government from messing with the rights guaranteed therein. Can a state abrogate the First Amendment right where the federal government couldn't, e.g.?

I'd also agree with Rick (not that I'm in disagreement with Shaun, necessarily) that the "justifications" for gun control would never, ever be acceptable justification to those employing such "reasoning" to curtail other constitutional rights, like protection against unlawful search and seizure. "Americans would be safer if people didn't have the right to face their accuser, or a right to a speedy trial, or a right to be safe in their person and homes from capricious search and seizure". Nope, not buying it.

I believe the framers regarded private gun ownership as a pillar of liberty, having recently defeated the most powerful nation in the world, largely because the Americans had their own weapons. Guns in the hands of amateur soldiers liberated the framers!

These citizen militia were preferable, in their eyes, to standing armies, which had been an instrument of their oppression (and had a history of being an instrument of oppression around the Empire and throughout history).

There was also no professional police force or other security to depend upon for protection of their lives or of their property ... and there was a freaking continent to tame! How would it seem unnatural to the framers that ordinary folk should have the right (NOTE: not "be allowed" like the state gives them permission) to own guns?

The right for a law-abiding citizen to own guns should be unfettered by regulation intended, basically, to discourage ownership by making ownership and/or acquisition more difficult.

If there were reasonable (loaded word, I know) regulations that had some actual results, I wouldn't be opposed to them in principle. Keeping guns out of the hands of violent felons, the mentally unstable, etc. I have no problem with, as long as the rules are written to address such parties specfically and exclusively.

Coming full-circle to Shaun's other regulation, if the background check was only to ensure you weren't a member of one of the aforementioned exceptions to the right, and was not unduly burdensome (in cost, delay, etc.) then I could live with it. If I go to Gander to buy a rifle, they run a NCIS check on me. I don't care.

JP