Is Gun Control the Answer? Politics Didn’t Create the Oregon Shooter

I think Paul’s understanding of the legitimacy of government in Romans 13 was tied to the magistrate to some extent. Paul saw a tierd system of power that existed in his time. We should treat each system of government’s authority structure in relation to its own constraints as we interpret the Bible. If I were part of a country with an absolute monarchy, I would have far fewer options to resist a government lawfully than I do with a constitutional republic as I have now. If a political system’s highest authority is a king, we may be under a lot more constraints than if we were under “a fuedal obligation to a king.” As the medievals and early moderns saw it, a king refusing to do his duties under his oath of protection could mean his servants could break from him.

[Shaynus]

Remember also that while driving is a privilege, keeping and bearing arms in common use is a constitutional right. The idea that one should be permitted to do so much like a driver of a car is missing this basic privilege vs. right difference.

I agree that in principle driving and bearing arms are not the same in the right/privilege category.

That said, while I’m not a constitutional law expert, I do know that rights are not absolute (e.g. the “shouting fire” exception). In my view, it would be perfectly reasonable to require a license to carry/use weapons, as long as this is a “shall issue” type license, which means if you can pass requirements for basic knowledge and safe use (i.e. the same type of things that would be taught to a militiaman), then issuance of the license is automatic. We accept limits on various rights (and even the “bear arms” right) in certain places, just as we accept that we can’t expect to say what we want if we are a spectator in court, and not expect that right to be taken away if we misuse it. We can still speak our minds, but we don’t have a right to do so in every place.

As I stated above, I believe that owning and using one’s firearms on one’s personal property should not have that license restriction. Driving is not a constitutional right, of course, but public use of a firearm has consequences that are possibly deadly, just like driving a car. Given that the right to keep and bear arms is no more absolute than any other right which can affect the safety of others when that right is abused, and the consequences of misusing that right very high, requiring training to exercise that right outside one’s private space is not at all unreasonable.

Shaynus wrote:

“requiring training to exercise that right outside one’s private space is not at all unreasonable”

I could not more strongly disagree with that statement.

Apply that statement to the first amendment. Do you want to have to get training and a permit from your local judge to practice your faith on the town square? You can keep your faith at home and maybe at your church but if you want to share it in public you have to be trained in tolerance? The local judge needs to know that you can safely share your faith? You need to show your permit to the local police officer who got a “man-with-a-Bible” call? Rights are absolute or they are not rights.

With Scripture, the first interpretation should be in light of other Scripture, not outside sources. Same with the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. The first interpretation is the document itself. You cannot apply the rights enumerated differently according to preference or place them on a scale of importance.

I do carry at all times where legal (and in Georgia, that is most places), firearms are my only hobby, competitive shooting is my only “sport” so I do place the discussion of gun rights up there with my religious freedoms.

p.s. How many of you knew that BJU is starting an intercollegiate shooting team. I like it.

Shaynus did not write the above quote attributed to Shaynus.
Shaynus however agrees that this is an issue over which reasonable people can disagree.

[ejohansen]

dcbii wrote:

“requiring training to exercise that right outside one’s private space is not at all unreasonable”

I could not more strongly disagree with that statement.

Apply that statement to the first amendment. Do you want to have to get training and a permit from your local judge to practice your faith on the town square? You can keep your faith at home and maybe at your church but if you want to share it in public you have to be trained in tolerance? The local judge needs to know that you can safely share your faith? You need to show your permit to the local police officer who got a “man-with-a-Bible” call? Rights are absolute or they are not rights.

which probably shows more clearly than anything that the so-called “right” to bear arms is no right at all. It isn’t a matter of conscience but of freedom.

[ejohansen]

Shaynus wrote:

“requiring training to exercise that right outside one’s private space is not at all unreasonable”

I could not more strongly disagree with that statement.

Apply that statement to the first amendment. Do you want to have to get training and a permit from your local judge to practice your faith on the town square? You can keep your faith at home and maybe at your church but if you want to share it in public you have to be trained in tolerance? The local judge needs to know that you can safely share your faith? You need to show your permit to the local police officer who got a “man-with-a-Bible” call? Rights are absolute or they are not rights.

With Scripture, the first interpretation should be in light of other Scripture, not outside sources. Same with the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. The first interpretation is the document itself. You cannot apply the rights enumerated differently according to preference or place them on a scale of importance.

I will also clarify that it was I who wrote what you attributed to Shaynus.

I think we have a more basic problem today in that we have ignored what was written by John Adams: “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”

It should be obvious that we have to teach our children our religion and morals (not to mention history) for them to be able to interpret the Constitution correctly and exercise our rights appropriately (i.e. self-limit). Children today would probably think it funny to shout “Fire” in a crowded theater, just as thugs use their firearms indiscriminately in crowded areas and seniors and children pay the price. I even know a Christian family where one son pulled the fire alarm at the church, because he thought it would be fun to try it. The parents didn’t treat it as something funny, but they also wrote it off as a youthful indiscretion, rather than treating it as the serious offense it was.

Should we have the kind of populace that we had in 1789, I would agree with you much more strongly than I do in our current state where the last couple generations know nothing about the constitution and how responsibility is the flip side of the coin from rights. If you go back to JFK, you even have Democrats admonishing us to ask what we can do for our country, not what our country can do for us. When have you heard anything like that these days?

Absent such teaching in the homes, schools, and churches, requiring some remedial training only makes sense. Most of the training I had for a CCW in NC was training on the law and situations/case studies that were to help us judge when we could legally and ethically use our firearms and also when we couldn’t and shouldn’t. I believed then (almost 20 years ago) and still do that such training is not only extremely valuable, it is more than reasonable.

My apologies to Shaynus. I did not mean to attribute the quote to the wrong person.

ejohansen, rights are NOT absolute, as was pointed out above the right to free speech has limits.

Rights come with responsibility of the right-holder. Rights with restrictions set by a second party are not rights, the are priveleges.

As was pointed out earlier (I will not try to attribute a quote :) ), the founders were aware of this risk but enumerated the rights anyway.

[Greg Long]

ejohansen, rights are NOT absolute, as was pointed out above the right to free speech has limits.

This depends on the kind of right we’re talking about. Not all rights are of the same level. Constitutionally speaking different rights have different levels of scrutiny. There haven’t been too many Supreme Court cases on gun rights until recently, and the right to keep and bear arms was found to be a fundamental right. I can’t think of a fundamental right that has a permit requirement. Some states don’t require carry permits of any kind, and blood is not running in the streets (at least not anymore than it is elsewhere, and sometimes a lot LESS).