The fundamental problem is our definition of reasonableness. Mine differs greatly from Walter M. Phillips Jr.:
My suggestion would be to introduce a bill requiring both a license and a detailed background investigation before allowing someone to possess or own a handgun.
Currently, there is no requirement in Pennsylvania to obtain a license in order to own a handgun.
That’s correct, because we don’t license fundamental rights. A background check is already required, and a few minute check on a computer is all it takes; criminal records are computerized.
The current meaningless background check in Pennsylvania, along with the state’s no-license requirement, allows unsavory characters to buy handguns and later sell them on the streets – not just in Philadelphia, but in Reading, York, Scranton, and neighboring states that have more restrictive laws. Ultimately, individuals use them to commit crimes and kill innocent people.
By unsavory character, you mean people who have no criminal record in the State Police’s database, and in the National Crime Information Computer? Because that’s the background check that’s going to be done for the license too. The state uses the same system to run Licenses to Carry. It’s a thorough check.
Someone who has been arrested for multiple robberies, but convicted of none (witnesses might have not shown up, changed their testimony, or been murdered), is not someone who should be allowed to buy one handgun, let alone the 10 he may seek to buy (since there is no one-gun-a-month law in Pennsylvania); neither should the individual who is under investigation by the attorney general for major drug deals (but who never has been convicted of a felony).
We do not deny fundamental rights in this country without due process. Eliminating due process of a fundmental right is under no one’s definition “reasonable”.
To my knowledge, the NRA has not had its members march on state capitols protesting the passage of license- or detailed-background requirement laws, nor has the NRA brought a court action to declare such laws as violating the Second Amendment. In other words, the NRA seems to have slowly come to the realization that these laws are reasonable.
What crack pipe are you hitting pal? Try to pass this crap, and you can bet your rosey red buttcheeks that we’re going to march on Harrisburg.
It can hardly be argued that requiring a license to own a handgun is unreasonable or burdensome. After all, a license is required to drive an automobile. Is not a handgun a far more dangerous instrument than an automobile?
Driving an automobile on public roads is not a right. Keeping a firearm is a right. And you don’t need a license to buy a car, just to drive one on the public highways.
I think it’s high time we wrote our legislators, and found out exactly what the PCCD is doing with out tax dollars. I do not take kindly to government appointees advocating positions that are contrary to the constitution and laws of this commonwealth.
Sir,
I have read your blog for quite a while now and would like a little assistance.
I’ve been debating Cliff Lyons at his blog http://oneutah.org/author/clifflyon/ since his post about Alan Korwin.
I know I’m not in the same league as a world class fisker as yourself, but I’ve tried.
I think my response to this post http://oneutah.org/2008/04/18/the-verdict-is-in-alan-korwin-told-a-lie-on-c-span-and-refuses-to-admit-it/#comment-109705
is barely adequate but would like to bring it to greater attention.
Sorry for the off topic post, please delete it if you desire.
Thanks
Bob
Who is this bozo, and if he said this on the floor, what did Sam Rohrer say in response?
First off, the instant background check is very thourough, and to me, at least, points out the amount of information instantly available via computer to ANY police or government agency, and probably to anyone else if they looked in the right place or paid the right person.
Second, persons suspected of crimes but never charged or convicted are called innocent in this country, and still have rights.
Third, many more are killed in auto accidents every year than by guns.
The writer evidently gets his gun and legal information by watching Law and Order re-runs or something similar.
mark
I quit subscribing to the Inquirer a couple of years ago. They never seemed to be able find the space to print reasonable rebuttals to 2A garbage like the above, no matter how many letters I wrote.
As for the guns, I think you covered that well enough, but I have to throw a flag on “Driving an automobile on public roads is not a right.”
I see no authorization in the constitution that grants the government power to regulate travel on publicly financed highways.
The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.
The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.
Was riding a horse on public roads or trails considered a right? Were people pulled off their horse by thugs demanding to see their government permit to ride it at gunpoint? Did they face a fine or jail time if they didn’t have their permit (or as the case may be in less then 1 month, “papers”)?
The fundamental right to travel, to immigrate or emigrate from state to state within the united States, or locally isn’t something I gave them the power to control. To be denied the right to travel when you want, where you want, and by the means you have available is authoritarianism. I can agree that a proficiency test is in order, I can see the benefits of insurance, but it IS a right.
You can walk on the roads. You have no right to drive a car. The courts have upheld that hundreds of times.
Me, I never read the Philly. I read the Trib-Review instead.
the courts ALSO upheld that blacks weren’t people.
I see no authorization in the constitution that grants the government power to regulate travel on publicly financed highways.
The federal government doesn’t have the power, but state governments can in the exercise of their police powers.
So he police powers are unlimited? Anything can be made a police power, in apparently the same way congress thinks everything is commerce? The right to own a gun should be subject to a license, or the right to speak, or to pray? Maybe in order to make sure criminals can’t hide evidence proving them guilty we can subject them to mandatory review of evidence before they can claim a 5th amendment right? Maybe if they’ll make the public “safer”?
Also, travel by foot or certain other means is indeed prohibited on roads. I can’t walk down to the nearest interstate highway system and just start walking or pulling a cart with my possessions.
It’s fine that you want to give the government the ability to decide which means of travel, or perhaps which arms, are acceptable without government approval, regulation, and licensing $chemes. I hope you can see the truth of the slippery slope, and hope that we don’t find ourselves lumped in with criminals should the supreme court come out with a similar argument in its Heller ruling. A very possible outcome. After all, they’re both matters of “public safety”
What the limits are depend on your theory of the state’s police powers. Driving on public roads is something that the courts have decided are within those powers. States have a lot of leeway in regulating behavior. I think the current understanding of police power is too broad, but it would take significant changes in the courts to alter that.