Late Entry
About six months ago, I asked:
Due to some bizarre set of circumstances, congress decides that all federal gun laws need to be re-written and revised. You are elected/selected/appointed as the negotiator for pro-gun folks. And there will be one negotiator for the anti-gun folks. All federal laws will be wiped clean and you two will negotiate what the new gun laws will be. There will have to be compromise on both sides. So, what will you concede? And what is nonnegotiable?
Armed Canadian has responded. He apparently found the draft he was working on.
October 18th, 2007 at 9:18 am
How about:
“The right of individuals to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.”
Period
October 18th, 2007 at 10:21 am
The problem I have with this premise, beggin’ your pardon, SayUncle, is this: Unless the negotiation is strictly tactical, it’s suicidal to do a deal with someone one knows for certain one can’t trust. Anyone who’s ever played a game of Diplomacy knows what I mean.
And that much we know for certain about the anti-gun side. Any deal they make is just “for now”–too many of them figure to disarm us completely somewhere down the road. Under those circumstances, if one isn’t planning to stick it to them first, one shouldn’t be negotiating at all.
But pretending for a moment that any deal made will actually hold over the long term, I’ll start with Armed Canadian’s effort. In the broad strokes, I agree with a fair bit of what he said. His modifications to NICS is a good start, but I prefer the BIDS system advocated by David Codrea and others. I would incorporate AC’s modifications to BIDS so that the people he described would not show up as prohibited persons (I reserve the right to request further modifications in order not to infringe the liberty of people who should not be infringed).
AC’s call for registration of field artillery and armored fighting vehicles (I will part company from him by adding jet fighters–jet fighters and AFVs are today’s horse artillery, in my view) wgives me pause, although I would probably go along with some form of storage requirement (either an explosives vault, other secure facility, or way the hell away from other occupied structures) because there may be a compelling interest involved.
October 18th, 2007 at 10:53 am
Unless the negotiation is strictly tactical, it’s suicidal to do a deal with someone one knows for certain one can’t trust. Anyone who’s ever played a game of Diplomacy knows what I mean.
It’s a good thing the founding fathers didn’t have that attitude when pounding out the constitution. The “lack of trust” between the federalists and the anti-federalists was legendary, but they worked it out in the end.
October 18th, 2007 at 12:05 pm
I was just trying to clear out the “in progress” material and get some stuff out while I worked on other stuff. The hammering has commenced. 🙂
I’m with you, oldsmoblogger, on BIDS. I like it. Technically, it can be implemented. Politically will be much harder and I can already imagine the shrill cries from the VPC, Ceasefire, BC and the like. Once we have momentum in truly rolling back their provisions of the last 40 years, BIDS is a great idea. Selling it will be hard because that is going to place trust and responsibility clearly onto the State and those running it and a Cho-like failure under BIDS is going to make them very, very uncomfortable. Then again, at least the blame will be going where it belongs for once.
I wrote the piece many months ago and it is kind of disjointed. Kind of in my early education days. But Uncle did ask us to compromise even though for most of us, compromise on such issues is anathema.
I’ll bend on the fighters, tanks and the such. I offer them up as sacrificial lambs to registration and control in order to keep the sheep from crying about the NRA wanting everyone to have tanks, bombs, nukes, etc. We have such existing controls today and keeping some form of them for paperwork purposes doesn’t constitute a burden. Whether the owners of such hardware would consider it reasonable is another story. I don’t want to throw anyone under the bus, NFA and big-toy guys included.
You’re right, there really is no compromise since by admitting there is, we’ve already lost. But we have to deal with the practical realities of public perception and lack of understanding and not how we wish things could be (and were).
Thanks for the link, Uncle! I wasn’t expecting it. Now I’m in trouble.
October 18th, 2007 at 12:23 pm
Rick, you kind of make my point for me. I’m fairly sure that Richard Henry Lee would look around at our world and say, “Told ya so.” 😉
In any case, at least as far as ratification is concerned, I believe it’s more the case that the Anti-Federalists were simply out-organized, outmaneuvered, and beaten, and settled for the Bill of Rights as the best they could get under the circumstances. I recommend Robert Rutland’s The Ordeal of the Constitution: The Antifederalists and the Ratification Struggle of 1787-88.
October 18th, 2007 at 6:25 pm
I’m with US Citizen. The compromise from our side, “we won’t punish you for treason for your betrayal of the Constitution to date, but we will if you do it again.
October 18th, 2007 at 11:23 pm
This is wayyy tooooo easy!
Drown the anti-human rights garbage in the toilet, declare peace, and go home!