Two different people (Dave and Stephanie) have sent me this link so I really should post about it. The gist of the article is the following:
All Americans have the right to bear arms. Some towns have even gone as far as to require each household to have a gun. Now a small Idaho town is contemplating a similar idea– it’s called the Civil Emergencies Ordinance. And although gun ownership is just one piece of this ordinance, it’s the part that’s getting the most attention.
“We’ve blessed to be a fairly rural area of the state, so we don’t have a lot of crime and I think we’d like to keep it that way,” said Lee Belt, Greenleaf city clerk.
Drive about 10 minutes west of Caldwell and you’ll run into Greenleaf, Idaho, population 860. If city council member Steve Jett has his way, each head of household that can legally own a gun, will. Along with that they’re encouraged to have ammunition and appropriate training.
Aside from hunting I sort of think of guns as flush toilets. They aren’t something that is particularly appealing on their own merits but they do a good job of disposing of human waste. I think every home should have at least one. It should be keep clean and functional. Everyone in the house should know how to use it or if they are too small to use it they should be keep away from it so they don’t get hurt.
For the city to mandate, with certain exceptions, gun ownership is sort of like mandating flush toilets. Are people so stupid that they don’t recognize the benefits of flush toilets? No. And people aren’t so stupid they don’t recognize the benefits of gun ownership either. The problem is the anti-gun bigots of the world make it socially uncomfortable in some circles to own guns. What needs to be done is to make those bigots social outcasts. It may be that this proposed ordinance will help make those bigots more obvious and hence it could be that it is a “good thing”. But in general it makes me just a little bit uncomfortable that government is getting involved in something like this.
This is one of those times where the libertarian and the conservative/originalist/founding-father-fetishist in me get into conflict. On the libertarian side, government interference, etc., etc. But, on the other hand, militia laws have existed (and are probably still on the books in some places) for hundreds of years that required each male to possess a servicable firearm and some measure of powder and shot. So: I wouldn’t (I don’t think) support or vote for such an ordinance, but at the same time, it doesn’t bother me much.
I’m with .06, but offer this: The First Amendment protects our right to worship in a church of our choice, but it doesn’t force us to go to church. It protects the right of free speach anf of the press, but it doesn’t force us to give speaches or write political papers.
I think the best way to handle the issue, if local politicians want to help, would be to prosecute anti-gun polioticians, judges, and LEOs. Slap them with criminal charges. This is what I told an NRA spokesman who called the other day. He was bragging about the NRA’s lawsuit, which as he described it was limited to an attpemt to force the gov officials to give back the guns confiscated in NOLA after Katrina.
If you want the 2nd Amendment to serve its purpose, then hammer those to took the Oath and then willfully violated that Oath, and make public examples of them. Then and only then sould we be even imagining other options.
Well we all have different ideas of who constitutes human waste, don’t we?