Sunday, September 10, 2006

Trying to rationalize gun control

I just watched Saul Cornell on C-SPAN2 plug his book on the Second Amendment (2A).
A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.
He didn't mention that he was funded by the gun control lobby, but it was pretty obvious that he wanted gun bans. His main claim was that the 2A were taken seriously, then (almost) everyone would have a machine gun, but that neither side of the gun debate wants us to live like Israel and Switzerland.

His biggest argument was a 200-year-old case in which Charles Austin shot someone in a prominent dispute, and was acquitted on grounds of self-defense. Cornell says that Austin never claimed that he had a 2A right to own a handgun. But no one ever accused him of illegally owning a gun either.

I think that able-bodied and civic-minded American men should own guns, and that we are a freer country as a result of the militia having guns.

Most of Cornell's arguments were just stupid. Austin didn't have to cite the 2A because no one disputed his right to have a gun. The interviewer did not ask any tough questions, but several of the callers made him look like an idiot.

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