Quote of the day—Mark Glaze

For our mayors, the tired debate about gun control is over and beside the point. Now that we know the answer, we can sort of put aside the tired debate at the extremes and focus on how you respect the Second Amendment and the rights of law-abiding owners and keep the guns out of hands of people who shouldn’t have it.

The sweet spot is letting law-abiding citizens buy the guns they want. While tightening the background check system to make sure the next Jared Loughner, the next Virginia Tech massacre doesn’t happen.

Mark Glaze
January 22, 2012
TN gun laws, or lack thereof, under attack
[As Glenn Reynolds said about the first sentence above, “What he means by that is, they lost.”

Yes, they lost but that doesn’t mean they aren’t still trying. Background checks are teetering on the edge of firearm and/or owner registration which is totally unacceptable. The ability with which a background check system could be turned into a registration system is scary easy. And since there is no evidence background check improve public safety I am of the opinion the system should be scrapped.

But what I find most interesting about this quote is that Glaze is willing to concede “letting law-abiding citizens buy the guns they want.”

Other anti-gun people and groups need to have that pounded into them in public debate. No “assault weapon” bans and stop the whining about “.50 caliber sniper rifles”.

Removing restrictions on suppressors are next and full-auto firearms are just over the horizon.—Joe]

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7 thoughts on “Quote of the day—Mark Glaze

  1. It’s amusing to see the Brady people complain that 1)the AWB didn’t work well because gun makers slightly altered the guns so they could be sold and 2) that we need to renew the AWB because it worked.

    Those big sillies.

    I also found this on the Huffington post about licensing and registration.

    “OK, I hear the whole “let’s treat guns like cars” thing all of the time, and I agree.
    – I don’t need a license to OWN a car, I just need one to operate that car on public streets. As long as I keep the car on my property, no license needed. I’m OK with that for guns.

    – That license is a $25 fee available to anyone over age 16 in most states, as long as they pass a simple vision test and a short quiz on the rules of the road. I’m fine with that for guns.

    – I can own any car I want and can afford, whether that be a race car that can exceed 200 mph, or a large truck. Same for guns: machine guns, bazookas, and any other gun.

    – I can own 1 car, or a hundred cars, as long as I can afford them.

    – I can own as much of the stuff that makes a car go (gasoline) as I can afford, and my vehicle can hold as much as I want it to. A truck that holds 50 gallons of fuel is common. Heck, I can make my own fuel if I desire. Same goes for guns: no limit on magazine size, no limit on the amount of ammo I can have or carry, and I can make my own.

    Tell me again how you want to treat guns like cars.

  2. How about before we change anything, we insist the current background checks get used by local governments to prosecute those who fail them for actual causes while trying to buy guns? There are reportedly a few million failures to pass NICS since the system was started, and there have been only a relative handful of prosecutions for felons and other prohibited persons trying to buy guns. USe what you have before burdening us with something else.

  3. Panamared,

    It means that inlaid fringe cannot be added to the item in question. Other decoration is permissible but fringe is definitely out. Ruffles might be a good substitute for fringe. 🙂

  4. @ubu52, That’s actually funny. 🙂

    But it’s not very helpful.

    @Panamared,

    In the context of political discussions about firearms it refers to the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution which says:

    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.

    At the time the writing of the constitution “infringed” meant “To defeat; invalidate.”

    Today “infringe” means “To transgress or exceed the limits of; violate: infringe a contract; infringe a patent.”

    It’s a subtle difference but originally the right to keep and bear arms would not be considered infringed unless it were to be invalidated. Today people will say things like, “What part of ‘shall not be infringed’ don’t you understand?” to express their belief that any transgression upon the right is unconstitutional. They are using the more current definition of the word “infringe”.

    This is probably not correct. Had the writers of the Second Amendment really meant that they could have used the same language as in the First Amendment and said, “Congress shall pass no law…”.

    Does that answer your question?

  5. They know that registration doesnt work so they’ll try registration by background check.
    That sounds ridiculous but consider how it could destroy gun shows. Anybody on the rights side of this probably already knows that Gun shows are high volume very low profit businesses. They’re not _selling_ guns, they’re renting space and running marketing for people who do. They are also a critical organizing place for RKBA activists, a few of them (not all) have leaders who care about RKBA.
    Adding the cost of administering NICs checks for someone who is renting out 700-1500 tables at a profit per table of ~$5 per table is really just saying “destroy gun shows”. The logistics and liability of it are impossible. And this is another case where I think the vast majority of anti gun folks (perhaps both of them) see that argument and think “Oh, that’s reasonable” but the people in charge of the policy, who are lobbying their base and the politicians, know in great detail just exactly how this would end gun shows and they -like- that. Partly because shows are critical organizing places for RKBA activists.

  6. I don’t see the subtle difference myself, but that’s probably just my brain not working well right now. Either way, I think the case can be made that the subtle difference isn’t enough to convince me that our current gun laws don’t infringe on our rights.

    “Had the writers of the Second Amendment really meant that they could have used the same language as in the First Amendment and said, “Congress shall pass no law…”.”

    I was reading an essay a while back that had an interesting point. The First Amendment does not forbid the President from issuing an executive order that bans free speech. You might argue that the Constitution *does* forbid such action, but if it does, it would only be through the 9th and 10th Amendments. (For the record, the essay was making the point that our law is contradictory, which is a good thing, because when you have contradictions, you can prove anything, which gives the law some needed flexibility; the essay then went on to make the case for anarcho-capitalism.) Our understanding of the 1st Amendment has changed somewhat since it was written, and some of that change has come because of the courts–but some of it is there, because we haven’t (and probably will never) test every nook and cranny of the implications of how the First Amendment was written.

    I, for one, am not going to complain about such “feature creep” or “mission creep” if it results in greater security for our natural rights!

    The Second Amendment is interesting, though, in that the language used clearly means than no one–not President, nor Congress, nor the Courts–has the authority to infringe on the right to keep and bear arms.

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