Cars should be treated like guns

Gun owners are hostile to having guns registered and requiring a license to own them. The fear of having that data in the hands of the government is justifiable. Not just stories like the Belgian Corporal from 75 years ago on another continent but the stories in present day from Connecticut, New York, and California.

Now we have conclusive evidence that car licenses are also subject to abuse.

It’s time to treat cars like guns. No more registration.

H/T To Tamara K. for the retweet of Kirk Freeman.

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22 thoughts on “Cars should be treated like guns

  1. The man who murdered Rebecca Schaefer could have just as easily been an LEO. Consider that policeman at the traffic stop in either Ohio or Indiana.

    • I was just thinking about her…. It’s a funny thing that California has some of the strongest privacy laws in the USA because of that case. It doesn’t say anything in the article but I doubt the average patrolman knows much about each car other than if it’s hot or not.

  2. You know, reading the story more closely, I’m wondering about this:

    A person may have access to a great number of cars, many of which are not registered in their name. (Think of families with more than one car or an employer with a fleet of cars.) Just because a car with a tag number of XXXXX is registered to you, that doesn’t mean you are driving it. There is no law that says you can only drive cars registered to you.

    I really don’t see the problem with these license plate readers….

    • Simple. They put a pair of them on a highway exactly a mile apart. They read plates, and have GPS synchronized clocks to 1/100th of a second or less. You pass one reader, then the other. They compare timestamps, calculate your speed, mail you the ticket. Wash, rinse, repeat every few miles of open straightaway.
      Could you fight it? Maybe. Probably. But that’s time and hassle and possibly money that could be better spent elsewhere.
      Still OK with the idea?

      • Just like the red light cameras, they have to prove it was you driving. Those plate readers don’t take photos of the driver.

        • Depends on the jurisidiction. Some are quite happy to ticket you without being able to clearly identify the driver, and courts are happy to rule in favor of the camera.

          • Those jurisdictions have the burden of proof backwards – you have to prove it wasn’t you driving, rather then the court proving it was you driving – but in the end it doesn’t matter. You still end up in court spending time and resources fighting ticket(s) that never should have been issued.

          • Archer, I agree. Yet, here we are.

            Since traffic tickets (ESPECIALLY red light cameras) are all about revenue enhancement and NOT about safety, the system is back-assward from the start.

  3. I read an interesting pro-gun argument that we should treat guns exactly like we currently treat cars a while back. Important points:

    You only need a driver’s license to drive on public roads. Any license is valid for driving on public roads in all 50 states, and can only be denied based on poor driving. Sounds like a good way to treat CHLs to me.

    Cars only need to be registered if they are being driven on a public road. If you don’t intend to do that, anybody can buy as many cars as they want of whatever type, and do whatever they want with them. So you would only need to register your gun if you were going to carry it in public, and otherwise, anybody can buy as many guns of as many types, sizes, and capabilities as they want and do whatever they want with them, without telling the Government anything. I can buy a bulldozer if I want to sounds like I can buy a RPG if I want to. Doesn’t sound so bad when you think of it like that.

    • Problem being that when you buy a gun, you usually have to traverse public roads to get to your house, and when you go on some lawful activity like hunting, range time, or carrying for self defense, you often go on public roads.
      Nope, swing and a miss.

      • I think you are being nit-picky with Mason. His point is about the ownership of firearms should be similarly neutral to that of vehicles. Your argument that just the mere transport of a firearm makes it subject to all the legal restrictions that a car would have on a public road (doing what it is intended to do,namely driving). By this logic anything that moved by any shipping would have to meet all sorts of zoning ordinances, noise standards, EPA regulations, and so on, all while safely tucked away in a box in the back of a semi while it moves. Nonsense.

        Your argument holds water when you mention uses of a firearm in public, namely concealed carry. Here at least there can be an argument about registration like a driver’s license. Personally, I despise registration and know that it far too often enables tyrants and dictators so really it is a small evil that gives rise to big evils. I would think that the Constitution and the Second Amendment are more than sufficient justification for our firearms and registration is neither needed nor lawful. We’ll get there some day and reclaim our rights from government usurpers.

      • Um, you can transit public roads with a vehicle that is not registered, titled, tagged, or even street legal. You simply cannot DRIVE it on that public road without the appropriate permission slips — OR an emergency that provides sufficient justification of necessity (such as immediate threat to life, and driving the “illegal” vehicle on a public way was the best option to avoid that threat).

        This maps PERFECTLY with a near unrestricted right to bear personal arms without registration, license, etc:

        When you are wearing a pistol, you aren’t USING it — you are TRANSPORTING it, just like a drag car on a trailer isn’t being driven on a public road. If you choose to pull your weapon and USE it on public property where such is normally disallowed, you either need the appropriate permission slips, OR an emergency that provides sufficient justification of necessity (self defense).

        • Remember, until you either threaten someone with it or actually fire it, you aren’t using a gun — you’re still just carrying it. So, under the “regulate guns like cars” meme, that’s:

          1. Repeal of the NFA and GCA concerning private sales, making, registration, or transfers. Repeal of MOST of the NFA and GCA concerning even FFL and SOT rules, EXCEPT, perhaps, retaining NFA registration for those desiring permission to FIRE NFA firearms on public lands for non-emergency purposes.

          2. Repeal of the Brady Bill entirely, except perhaps for people desiring permission to FIRE guns on public lands for non-emergency purposes.

          3. Repeal of ALL state/local level gun control, gun registration, concealed carry licenses, etc., except for those desiring to FIRE guns on public lands for non-emergency purposes.

          4. No age limits, unless you wish to FIRE guns on public lands for non-emergency purposes. (Yes, if you can toddle up with enough cash that IS YOURS, you can buy a car at any age, even if too young to drive.)

          Etc., Etc.

          Basically, unless you hunt on public lands, or wish to use a GOVERNMENT firing range, there would be exactly ZERO gun control for anyone who is not involuntarily confined as a criminal or mental patient (and those released with restrictions on their liberty still in force).

          This is not what the anti-gun bigots ACTUALLY want — so they must break down into two categories:

          1. Bold faced lying bigots who wish to impose tyranny.

          or

          2. People who have been fooled by the lying bigots and are nothing but useful idiots for tyranny, wholly unaware of their actual role as pawns.

    • There are anti-gunners who are suffering from the delusion that “cars are more regulated than guns”. Even with the crazy things they are doing in LA, that’s not even within three orders of magnitude of true.
      There’s GREAT essay on this subject: http://www.michaelzwilliamson.com/blog/item/we-need-to-regulate-cars-the-way-we-regulate-guns
      Of course, the anti-gunners are also likely to be the ones that pretend “driving is a privilege, not a right” as if the freedom to move around at will isn’t one of the most fundamental of human rights, violated only in totalitarian countries like Russia, and clearly protected by the 9th Amendment.

      • Paul — there is NO reasonable doubt that driving on public roads is a privilege, not a right.

        Your freedom of movement does not require you to be the OPERATOR of a motor vehicle.

        • BALONEY.
          Of course it requires the ability to operate a motor vehicle. How else are you going to get from point A to point B when you want to?

          • You can walk, take public transportation, hitchhike, bum a ride from a friend, etc.

            The assertion that driving on public roads is a “right” is ludicrous.

            If you and your buddies want to fund a transcontinental network of PRIVATE roads, you can set any rules for driving privileges ON THOSE PRIVATE ROADS that you like.

            In the meantime, the government can set the rules for operating a motor vehicle on government roads, just as they get to write the rules for use of the government rifle ranges available in some government-owned hunting lands.

            We tried anarchy on the highway. It didn’t work real well.

  4. Who tried anarchy on highways? Like other forms of supposed anarchy that statists like to refer to, I suspect this one is also imaginary.
    It’s hard to walk from Boston to Chicago. Hitchhike? That, by induction, also requires someone who has the right to drive.
    Public transportation? That requires the government, in its infinite benevolence, to supply it, at great taxpayer expense, and it assumes that there is such transportation between point A where you are and point B where you want to go, around the time when you want to go. What if the government arbitrarily decides not to provide that transportation?
    The reality is that this is, as usual, about control. Leftists dislike private transportation because it interferes with central control. They like “public transportation” because it supports that control.
    Note also that licenses for vehicles are a relative novelty. No one ever required licenses to travel by horse, or by horse drawn carriage, or bicycle. But at the time that motor vehicles arrived (around 1900), the omnipotent state was emerging, and this was an obvious place for it to grab power.
    Finally, the notion of “government” as some independent authority that is entitled to make up rules for things that it “owns” is illogical as well as unconstitutional. First of all, the government is allowed to own only specific limited things. (In particular, in the case of the Federal government, those include neither roads, nor parks, nor hunting lands.) Second, the government is the servant of the people. That means that any rules established by the government have to be designed to further that service. Rules of the road necessary to protect a driver from the carelessness of another fit. But pushing the notion that use of the roads is a “privilege” that as such can be denied at pleasure amounts to turning the government into the master. Yes, that’s what leftists want to do, but no, that’s not what the Constitution says.

    • Paul — at the very beginning of the automotive period, there were no tarffic laws on most roads nor driving license requirements for ANY roads. That’s “anarchy on the highways”.

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