Town asks residents to arm themselves
Nearly every home in Greenleaf would be asked to keep and maintain a firearm under a proposed ordinance being considered by the City Council.
Ordinance 208, sponsored by Councilman Steven Jett, is known as the “Civil Emergencies Ordinance.”
In addition to a recommendation that certain heads of households own guns, it authorizes planning for a city emergency operations center, authorizes development of an emergency operations plan, authorizes the promotion and support of citizen emergency response teams and neighborhood watch groups, and authorizes promotion of firearms safety and training for residents.
Jett said the primary purpose of the ordinance was to support county emergency operations planning, but realized the firearms provision would be what would “make the headlines.”
Greenleaf Mayor Bradley Holton said he supports the spirit of the ordinance, and pointed out that the proposal is not a mandate because it encourages gun ownership, but does not require it — as a similar law has done in the town of Kennesaw, Ga. since the early 1980s.
Compulsory firearms ownership, I would have a problem with.
September 20th, 2006 at 2:55 pm
IIRC, one of the original drafts of the Second Amendment had a clause allowing Quakers and other CO’s to opt out of carrying arms, implying that the intent of the Second was for everyone to own a gun.
September 20th, 2006 at 4:39 pm
Captain Holly,
You’re correct about that intent. I think Patrick Henry said, “the great object is that every man be armed.”
But being “pro-choice” on guns and armed self-defense, I think that the government should not require that “the people keep and bear arms” any more than it should “infringe on the right of the people to keep and bear arms”.
Anyone is free to waive any right including the RKBA and be an unarmed pacifist.
September 21st, 2006 at 12:40 am
Worked for Kennesaw, Georgia.
http://www.tysknews.com/Depts/2nd_Amend/crime_rate_plummets.htm
September 22nd, 2006 at 3:19 am
A right is exercised at the volition of the individual owning that right. Should it become mandatory or prohibited, it is no longer at his volition and therefore is not a right.
September 24th, 2006 at 2:59 am
[…] […]