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MmeGigs -> RE: Supreme Court strikes down handgun ban (6/26/2008 8:11:00 PM)
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quote:
ORIGINAL: Owner59
This law won`t make anyone safer.Lol,a few dopes will end up shooting themselves in the leg or shooting a family member/friend.
I was listening to an interview with a law enforcement official, I think from Los Angeles, and this is pretty much what he predicts will happen based on his experience with home defense firearms. Few of them are ever actually used for home defense, and when they're not kept unloaded and locked up, the folks killed or injured by them are most often the folks who live in the home.
Anyone with any sense is going to keep their guns locked up and unloaded despite the SCOTUS ruling. Most of those who choose not to do so will never have an accident that will cause them to regret their decision, and I'm sure that there are folks out there who will feel safer for having an unlocked and loaded pistol readily at hand. However, there is certain to be an uptick in the number of personal/family tragedies involving firearms. I don't expect that unlimited-gun-rights folks will be too swayed by this. To be honest, I'm not, either. I don't see much point to a trigger lock/gun safe law since there's really no way to enforce it. It's not like we've got loads of extra man-hours available in law enforcement to go out and spot check. I'm sure there are people who wouldn't know to lock things up if they weren't legally required to do so, but I'm not real big on trying to legislate away stupidity. I prefer education to legislation whenever possible. When the states are forced to rewrite some of their gun rules, I'd like to see them spend some money on gun safety courses and public service announcements about responsible gun ownership. Publicize the crap out of it when some kid gets killed playing with an unsecured gun to bring the risks home, and tell folks what they can do to prevent it from happening at their house.
I imagine insurance companies will have something to say about it all. I'd guess that after a smattering of high-profile tragic accidents with big buck lawsuits there will be a standard clause in homeowners' policies denying coverage for incidents involving unsecured firearms. A couple of news stories about someone losing everything they own or will ever own because the neighbor kid found their gun and shot itself with it will likely be more effective than legislation in getting people to secure their weapons. The market at work...
I'm not all that shook up about the ruling. I had no doubt that the DC gun ban would be overturned. I would have preferred that someone other than Scalia had written the majority opinion. He's not a very pragmatic fellow and really seems pretty angry and cynical to me. I don't have much time for angry cynics of any political stripe. He hit the thing with a sledgehammer instead of cutting it with a scalpel, and pretty much guaranteed that there will be plenty of legal challenges and refining decisions down the road. Had he limited the decision to the outright ban that was the issue in the case before them, it would have been pretty much a done deal. As it is, it will be a good time to be a lawyer with 2nd Amendment cred, no matter which side of the issue you're on. A Democratic president and/or a filibuster-proof D majority in the legislature, a SCOTUS retirement or two, and we'll see the pendulum swing back, although I doubt that outright bans will be allowed again. Those who doubt this only have to look at Roe v. Wade to see what happens with controversial decisions. No decision is ever final. The anti-gun folks aren't going to give up on this any more than the anti-abortion folks have given up on Roe. If anything, this decision will get the anti-gun folks fired up.
There will always be restrictions to gun ownership, just as there are to free speech and any other right that the Constitution grants us. I don't expect that an ordinary citizen will ever be able to legally own artillery or automatic weapons, and there will continue to be restrictions on concealed weapons and continued scrutiny of fast and powerful guns. I kind of agree with the gun folks that "guns don't kill people - people kill people", and wouldn't mind everyone having a gun if I thought that folks were basically rational and responsible, but I am as sure as I can be that there are a lot of people out there who don't have a lick of common sense and shouldn't be trusted with sharp objects let alone firearms. I was pretty dismayed when folks in my state wanted (I think they succeeded) to strip the sheriff's office of its ability to review and reject handgun applications. I live in a smallish city where law enforcement has a pretty good idea who is associated with whom. If I had no criminal record but the sheriff knew that I associated closely with meth addicts or thieves or drug dealers, he could deny my application for a handgun. I don't think he can do that anymore. That's kinda scary. I know that law enforcement everywhere isn't as rational as it is where I am so I wouldn't have a problem with judicial review of rejected handgun permit applications, but it seems assinine to me to force those charged with public safety to approve permits when they're reasonably sure that the gun will end up in the hands of someone who shouldn't have it. Do we really want some dippy girlfriend of a meth-cooking (and dangerously paranoid) criminal to be able to buy semi-automatic weapons? I'd just as soon prevent that when we can.
I'd like to see firearms treated like vehicles. You have to prove proficiency before you can operate one, and if you've shown yourself to be irresponsible or dangerous you lose your right to operate one. Most responsible pro-gun folks I know are more or less on board with that idea - they're safety first kind of people, much like responsible kinkyfolk, and don't want a bunch of idjits out there screwing things up for them, much like responsible kinkyfolk. The folks I've met personally who are against any limitations whatsoever on their right to bear arms seem to be imagining some fantasy land where only upright and responsible people will want to own guns. They don't want to acknowledge that tossing out all of the regulations will allow some of the very people they're afraid of to keep and bear arms.
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