Doonesbury by Garry Trudeau for June 28, 2014

The Full Monty

I dunno. What are you gonna do, Marty?

Bearing arms leads to the slippery slope of mass shootings, or so the Democrats tell me. I wonder what’s taking so long for them to work on repealing it?

That freely assembling thing also might need to be worked on. Who knows what kind of deviltry those rascally Republicans will get up to if they can actually assemble. They need to work on only allowing that for the saintly Democrats who are the only ones who know what’s good for us and the country.

A sacrificed chicken in every pot.

…Actually, it wasn’t the constitution that granted these rights. It was the Bill of Rights! Get your history facts straight, folks.

Which were the same arms the government had at the time. And there was no standing army in peacetime. Now we have civilian police with APCs, automatic weapons, drones, and whatever other military hardware is declared “surplus”. If someone did want to officially declare a dictatorship the hardware is pre-staged. Don’t forget about the DHS.

You used to be able to mail order Thompson machine guns for $150, until some idiots made alcohol illegal and gave the Mafia so much business. Obviously since alcohol prohibition worked so well we needed to ban guns too.

Ow. The lack of historical accuracy hurts.We became free when the British gave up on the war. Then we had the Articles of Confederation for a few years. THEN we got the Constitution, and plenty of people thought it would destroy their freedom because it created a strong central government (which is something we still seem to be worried about today…). Then the Bill of Rights was ratified two years later.Yes, I realize it’s a comic and this whole story has been ridiculous. :)

@rpmurray

“the saintly Democrats who are the only ones who know what’s good for us and the country.”~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~I have observed that the Republicans know what’s good for Republicans.

Bare arms came much later, after the sexual revolution if you know what I mean.

’ “A fraud on the American public.” That’s how former Chief Justice Warren Burger described the idea that the Second Amendment gives an unfettered individual right to a gun. When he spoke these words to PBS in 1990, the rock-ribbed conservative appointed by Richard Nixon was expressing the longtime consensus of historians and judges across the political spectrum. ’ — Michael Waldman

Enjoy it while you can Nate. The currentadministration is working on a way to takeback those rights.

Personally, I think the Heller decision was essentially correct: the right of self defense ought at least to cover common and generally accepted means of self-defense. Heller was wrong, IMHO, in basing that decision on the 2d Amendment. I don’t, however, buy any “slippery slope” argument that equates, say, universal background checks with general confiscation. When the NRA goes around saying that allowing any sort of gun regulation is equal to confiscation they are just mongering fear for their own purposes, or expressing a deep-rooted paranoia. And yes, the law does not always equate to the will of the majority, nor does the will of the majority always equate to the law. Of course, as conservatives love to point out when they oppose any measure favored by the majority, ours is not a pure democracy. When the law and the majority disagree, however, it more often means that the law should be changed than that the majority should restrain itself. (Though a big enough majority can do whatever it likes: which is what amendments are all about.) In the end, rule is always in the hands of the majority, or a minority. There is no third alternative.

If I stood up in Congress and started screaming four-letter words, they’d shut me up. Clearly, there are limits they accept on the First Amendment. Why don’t they accept sensible limits on the Second?

This says it all:’http://www.dailykos.com/news/GunFail

“I know it is an old argument, but I still cannot, for the life of me, understand why weapons are not treated more like cars.”.It shouldn’t be hard to understand. The right to keep and drive cars is not written into the Bill of Rights..As doughfoot points out, even in protected rights, we punish the misuse of those rights. We do not forbid them before they have been misused. If we could regulate who could keep and bear arms, we could set the regulations such that they could not be kept or used. .Remember how President Wilson revoked postal privileges of newspapers who angered him? That was his way of avoiding a free press. .Imagine if the right to keep arms required a loyalty oath, perfect eyesight, no high blood pressure, being white, male, under the age of 50, and a thousand dollar per year license with proof of marriage, birth certificate, fingerprinting, et cetera..Most of us wouldn’t like having the exercise of voting rights contingent on such restrictions, or any other enumerated right.“Sure, you have a right to do it but not if I set up a barrier you can’t jump.”What kind of a right is that?.When people say, “Nobody wants to take away your Second Amendment rights, we just want to forbid certain weapons and besides, the Second Amendment does not really mean the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed, ir REALLY means, you can do it unless the government by a majority vote says otherwise”, who’s going to trust such an obvious liar? .The Bill of Rights was not written to give the Federal Government more power, but to restrict its use of power, to protect the people from a potentially abusive government. Even if 99% say I shouldn’t be allowed to say something, the Bill of Rights says I can. If 99% don’t like me being able to assemble to protest against wrongs, the Bill of Rights says I can do it..The Bill of Rights was intended as a protection of minorities from the abuses of majorities.

I don’t think those liberties were in the Constitution. Nate must be thinking of the Bill of Rights down the road. Before we had the second amendment, citizens had to register their firearms. He can go back to sawing wood.

@Travis BickelHas any jack booted thug come into your house and taken your guns? Do Republicans still hold meetings and conventions? Do the President’s critics still make comments and write articles criticizing him?Yesterday I said, your arrogance is only matched by your ignorance. Today I can say, it is also matched by your mendacity.

Limiting access to ammo would be exactly like saying, “You can have a gun but you have to keep the barrel full of concrete.”

The only “right” anyone seems to care about anymore is the right to be able to keep a gun in order to kill someone who crosses them. It’s pretty sad.

The original Constitution was ratified without the Bill of Rights after several states were assured that the Bill of Rights would be added in the future.

We would all do best to ignore the troll. They thrive on attention, especially if they think they have caused irritation.