At least 157 people were killed and 270 were injured last year in unintentional shootings by children, according to Everytown, an advocacy group for firearm safety.

  • HelixDab2
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    8 months ago

    Militia service wasn’t a privilege; it was a requirement. If you were within a certain age group, your were legally obligated to show up and drill. But people that were not in the militia–due to age, or other limiting factors–still owned and used military arms at the time. Even trying to make a real distinction between military arms and non-military arms is largely an exercise in futility, given that all arms in common use started as military arms.

    the militia as a community resource disappeared

    In point of fact, state and local governments are trying to ban militias. Sure, that would make the threepers illegal, but it would also likely ban things like the John Brown Gun Club and Socialist Rifle association, which are much more actively community-focused than the far-right militia groups.

    Other amendments - due process etc aren’t lost when you commit a crime

    Yes, and that’s a problem, isn’t it? The prohibitions against unreasonable search and seizure require the gov’t to make an argument to a court that they need to be able to search; they need probably cause to deprive you of that right in even a limited way. It seems reasonable to expect that felons–once they have served the term of their sentence–should have the same rights as other people, and that the gov’t should be required to make a case as to why they should be able to continue to deprive a person of those rights. Someone that’s stolen from their employer is probably a far lower risk for committing a violent act than someone that was convicted of battery.

    gun owners complain like whiny children over the most basic obligations like licensure, training, etc.

    Make them free to the user, covered by income taxes in much the same way that the infrastructure for voter registration is (…which, BTW, only exists because anti-immigrant political agitators stoked fears of non-citizens voting; it very much mirrors the elections fear-mongering nonsense that Trump is pushing right now). Ensure that everyone has reasonable access, which means you can’t run them only during business hours M-F. But you also can’t have a failing condition, other than simply not showing up, because otherwise I guarantee you that it will turn into literacy tests for voting. That is, if a state, county, or city is allowed to set a standard that must be met in order to exercise a right, then I promise you that some places will ensure that the standard is so high that neither Jerry Miculek nor Ben Stoeger could pass it, because they will want to effectively ban firearm ownership.