From: PA146008@utkvm1.utk.edu (David Veal)
Subject: Re: Have you heard of the Religious Left?
Organization: The University of Tennessee, Knoxville
Date: Wed, 16 Sep 1992 02:56:18 GMT

In article <pt79jmk@twilight.wpd.sgi.com>
coolidge@speaker.wpd.sgi.com (Don Coolidge) writes:

[Who, dare I ask, is Grant Cunningham?]

>In article <1992Sep15.220313.19122@SSD.intel.com>, hays@ssd.intel.com (Kirk Hay) writes:
>|> In article <1992Sep15.161152.11305@news.uiowa.edu>, williams@herky.cs.uiowa.du (Kent Williams) writes:
[Standard grammar/spelling/attitude flame deleted.]

[Not-so-standard argument flame deleted.]

>|> Let's teach people responsibility, then punish them when they overstep
>|> the bounds, rather than punishing everyone preemptively by outlawing
>|> things or thoughts.
>
>Now, this I can agree with. In addition, let's teach responsibility to
>our *corporate* citizens as well. Just how responsible do you consider
>companies to be which manufacture products (call them "Saturday Night
>Specials", or "Zyklon B Gas", or whatever you wish) whose only purpose is
>to kill people?

     Guns are only to kill people in the same way that baseball bats
are only to kill people, *if* you totally ignore all their other uses.

>I have no argument with rifles, and Kent hasn't a total
>argument with them, but we're both opposed to handguns. How can you
>possibly defend handguns? - other than with typical rabid NRA yammering,
>that is. As we all can see.

     Hi, I'm not a member of the NRA.  I don't get NRA publications.
I don't even own a gun.
     Handguns are 1) useful for defense, 2) used for sports, including
target shooting, and yes hunting, 3) and nifty collector's items.
     I used to generally dislike guns and lean toward restrictions,
though I felt the 2nd prevented those.  Then I looked some stuff up.
Must have missed those NRA seals of approval down at the public library.

>|> For those who don't get it, try substituting "the press", "freedom from
>|> search and seizure", "privacy", "freedom from self-incrimination",
>|> "freedom of assembly", etc., into Williams' ramble.
>
>Idiot. You are talking about unambiguous guaranteed rights in the first
>ten amendments.

     I believed that the Second Amendment protected an individual right
to keep and bear arms even when I thought guns were a bad idea.  (I've
always had a bad tendency to read what's on the paper.

>Kent was talking about lethal weapons. There is no congruence
>between your "ideas" and his. There is no right to endanger the public.

     The government may have the right to regulate the *use* of firearms
to prevent endangering the public.  Simple *posession* of a gun does not
in and of itself endanger the public, just like simply owning a car does
not contribute to automobile accidents.

>The
>constitution guarantees a right to have an armed militia in order to ensure
>the general welfare.

     The phrase is "security of a free state."

     The Constitution also says, "the right of the people to keep and bear
arms shall not be infringed."  The first clause you refer to does not,
gramatically, restrict the second, and I don't believe that its mere
existance does either.
     However, even if it did, the militia includes the whole of the
people capable of bearing arms.

>The Supreme Court has seen fit to extend that guarantee
>to cover private ownership of weapons without a militia. But handgun
>registration laws, and even outright bans, have never been judged to be
>unconstitutional purely on the basis of the ban, despite the Court's
>interpretations of the Second Amendment.

     The Supreme Court has not decisively come down one way or the other,
although pre-twentieth century court cases imply this reading.
     The Court has said that the states can't outright ban guns, because
that would eliminate the federal government's access to the militia.  As
the Constitution provides for joint provision between the states and the
feds of the militia, the reverse would probably hold as well.
     Federal Registration of firearms has been upheld *only* under the
federal government's power to tax.  A federal appeals court ruled that
since the government is no longer accepting taxes for fully-automatic
weapons, they no longer have any power to regulate them.  The government
did not appeal, so that is only effective in that area.

>|> If you're for any freedom, then you need to be for all freedoms, not
>|> just the ones you find modern, convenient, sanitary, or palatable, or
>|> you're subject to "divide and conquer" and "salami" politics.
>
>How much freedom does an inner-city teenager have to walk the streets at
>night in his or her own neighborhood? How much freedom does the convenience-
>store clerk have when a .45 is being held to his head? - or the young
>housewife whose husband is out of town when confronted by a gun-wielding
>rapist? (We had one of those happen here just last week.) Seems to me that
>they are being denied at least the pursuit of happiness, often liberty, and
>frequently life. What are you willing to do to guarantee _those_ freedoms, eh?

     We can't guarantee freedom to the extent you apparently want.  My right
to life can be violated at any time.  Somebody could swerve and kill me on
the road without any warning.
     You asking that your safety be guaranteed, and that isn't possible.
Further, you want somebody else's rights to be violated in order to
attempt to satisfy that impossiblity.
     Propose solutions to these problems.  To be effective, though, your
solutions will have to deal with criminal access to guns.  If your solutions
don't stop that, then your solution isn't one.  "It couldn't hurt," is
not sufficient.

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| David Veal  PA146008@utkvm1.utk.edu                                  |
|             University of Tennessee Division of Continuing Education |
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