An excellent opinion piece by Judge Napolitano!
Money bits:
- It would be exquisitely unfair, profoundly unconstitutional and
historically un-American for the rights of law-abiding folks —
“surrender that rifle you own legally and use safely because some other
folks have used that same type of weapon criminally” — to be impaired in
the name of public safety.
- It would also be irrational. A person willing
to kill innocents and be killed by the police while doing so surely
would have no qualms about violating a state or federal law that
prohibited the general ownership of the weapon he was about to use.
- The government can no more interfere with Second Amendment rights than
it can infringe upon any other rights. If this were not so, then no
liberty — speech, press, religion, association, self-defense, privacy,
travel, property ownership — would be safe from the reach of a fearful
majority.
Anti-firearm forces have been nibbling away at the the right to keep and bear arms for years, slowly "boiling the frog" one bite at a time. Because the underlying issues involved in mass killing sprees, it is clear none of these will work - even a total ban were it to be attempted.
1. We have been unable to keep illicit drugs from entering this country no matter Herculean efforts. Do we really think we can keep guns from coming across our southern and northern borders?
2. Even if every law-abiding gun-owning citizen were willing to turn in their firearms, will the firearms in the hands of criminals also be turned in. Is that not out of character for a criminal?
3. It is assumed that law-abiding citizens will willingly do so. Therein lies a great conundrum; crime with firearms is committed by non law-abiding people. So passing a law requiring the turn-in of firearms relies on people's willingness to follow the law. Hence, you are only disarming the least threatening elements in society.
4. Of course, as I have noted before, the assumption that law-abiding citizens will comply is faulty.
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