Moderates drinking kool-aid
Over at the moderate voice, Paul Silver asks:
I came across these reasonable comments from Paul Helmke, a former Republican mayor of Fort Wayne, Ind., and the new president of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence:
…Concerns for gun violence prevention and public safety should not be categorized as pro-gun versus anti-gun.
What’s “anti-gun” about wanting background checks to make sure that those with criminal records aren’t buying guns legally?
What’s “anti-gun” about restricting bulk sales of handguns, a sure sign that someone wants to sell those guns illegally on the secondary market?
Why isn’t it “pro-gun” to want to crack down on the 1 percent of gun dealers who sell 57 percent of the guns that end up being used illegally; or to support more financing for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives?
Everyone else is having the second amendment fight but I answered questions about reasonableness here.
December 21st, 2006 at 10:55 am
I’m not one of those people who likes moderates who take a bit from each side and combine it into a policy that mostly won’t make anyone happy:
“You folks over here want to ban guns, and you folks over there want your own M16. Well, I see what each of you are saying, but how about we ban M16s and anything that looks like them, and you can have something else that goes bang? You don’t really need an M16 do you?”
I don’t think any gun control laws are “reasonable” because I don’t think any of them work. There are some I’m willing to tolerate, because they are a minor burden and they seem to take the issue off the table for a lot of “moderates”, but given that I’ve seen no evidence at all that guns control accomplishes a damned thing, I don’t see any reason to pretend like there are good ideas out there in the gun control movement, just so I can wake up in the morning, look myself in the mirror, and congratulate myself for being a moderate. The only reason I support the kind of horse trading the NRA does is because that’s political reality. It doesn’t mean I have to like it.
December 21st, 2006 at 11:10 am
I agree with Sebastian, and I reiterate that gun control laws should be viewed as Constitutional, and not policy, issues.
We shouldn’t be talking about reasonable gun access restrictions and common sense gun laws – we should be interpreting “shall not be infringed.”
December 21st, 2006 at 12:41 pm
The notion that constitutional precludes reasonable simply does not wash. All constitutional provisions must be interpreted reasonably, else the First Amendment would guarantee your “right” to falsely yell fire in a crowded theater, or even a Mafia don’s “right” to order his subordinates to bump somebody off, so long as he doesn’t personally pull the trigger himself. Similarly, the Fourteenth Amendment would preclude not only affirmative action but “separate but equal” bathrooms for men vs. women, mandate equal opportunity for white guys wishing to work in police gang infiltration units, and ban just about every other law whose opponents can construe it as some arbitary (or, now that the reasonabless argument is out the window, even a NON-arbitrary) form of discrimination.
It’s hard enough trying to convince the courts to take the Second Amendment as seriously as they take, say, the First or the Fourteenth. Expecting them to take a more absolutist position on the Second than they would on anything else is neither realistic nor even desirable. Of course some forms of gun control work – not allowing children to buy them or prison inmates to possess them being only two of the most obvious examples. The real response to Helmke’s screed is to point out the long list of gun control proposals the Brady Center proposes that are not reasonable, and to explain why.
December 21st, 2006 at 2:22 pm
I didn’t say that Constitutional precludes reasonable.
Firthermore, it depends on whether you interpretavie bent is originalist, legislatvie (think: Roe vs. Wade) or consistent with the notion of a living, breathing Constitution.
I don’t think that the framers of the Constitution intended that any sort of guns be outlawed, restricted or regulated.
There is a process for amending the Constitution, and the debate over whether the 2A is too permissive, broad, etc. and whether it should be amended is where policy considerations and notions of reasonableness come into play.
I will debate you on affirmative action some other time.
December 21st, 2006 at 3:40 pm
I don’t think the constitution precludes any regulation of arms, but I think it would preclude quite a lot of federal and state gun control laws, including the machine gun bans. But I draw a distinction between what’s constitutional and what’s effective. I think some gun control laws (background checks maybe) would probably stand under even a fairly broad reading of the second amendment, but that doesn’t mean I think they actually stop criminals from getting firearms.
December 21st, 2006 at 7:11 pm
Guess it depends on how you interpret “infringed.”
On Constitutional matters, I draw a big distinction between the words of the Constitution and its sometimes twisted (think: the 2 University of Michigan affirmative action cases handed down on the same date – 1 for and 1 against) interpretations by SCOTUS.
I think about how the frames would interpret the Constitution and not how a politically appointed judge would interpret it.
December 22nd, 2006 at 5:31 pm
Chris, you’re the one twisting words here, not me. As used in the Second Amendment, the most likely meaning of “infringed” is “destroyed.” They didn’t use the word they way they use it now, where every minor inconvenience is deemed to “infringe” on someone’s rights. I agree that the framers would not have agreed with both the Gratz and the Grutter decision; neither did 8 of the Supreme Court Justices on the bench at the time, and the other wasn’t really much of a judge, was she? But I’d be damned if I knew which of the two positions the Framers of the Fourteenth Amendment would have taken, if either, as the case dealt with a form of discrimination the framers almost certainly did not contemplate, and probably did not think would ever be politically feasible. I can say without reservation, however, that waiting periods, background checks, bulk sales restrictions and most of the other modest controls discussed in this article would have passed muster under the Second Amendment, either as contemplated by its framers or by any Supreme Court that could have ruled on them from then until now.
Sebastian has the right idea, though: just because a particular gun law is constitutional, that doesn’t necessarily make it a good idea. I submit that no matter where you stand on guns, unless you can think of at least ONE particular gun law that you think is both stupid and constitutional, you’re probably not being entirely honest with yourself about the Constitution.