3 thoughts on “Agreed”

  1. If the goal is to maximize safe and widespread transportation then of course it’s a dumb idea, but if the goal were to eventually eliminate private citizen driving altogether then it would make good sense– Do whatever is possible in the current political climate to inhibit, frustrate and discourage it, “chilling effect” being the order of the day.

    Again; don’t judge gun laws based on their stated intentions, but on their actual intention. Then it all becomes predictable and consistent. Only then can any real opposition be mounted. If we’re attacking the silliness of the assertions we’re only chasing phantoms; they have us fighting, yes, but in their arena and on their terms, and in that case when we “win” we lose because we’ve reinforced their premise that government has some jurisdiction or authority in the matter.

    The driving comparison is only partially valid of course, because we’re all driving on government-built, government-maintained roads, having load limits, highway patrols and all the rest. If we accept the paradigm of government roads then we must accept the licensing, taxation and restriction system which is a necessary part of it, and so the analogy, ultimately, falls completely apart, into nothing.

    If driving were truly alike to the second amendment, we’d have language along the lines of “congress shall make no law respecting the establishment of transportation, nor prohibiting the free exercise thereof…” and our society (our cities and technology) would look very different from what it does today; so much so that it would be almost unrecognizable from our current viewpoint.

    Probably a better comparison would be between speech and the press on one hand and the bearing of arms on the other. Even there, sadly, we have the FCC, the 501 C3 thingy, public “education” and many other intrusions and incursions into what was supposed to be free speech, and furthermore we’ve largely accepted them.

    So it is that a fully intact second amendment would look unlike pretty much anything else in our current political and cultural landscape.

    Until there is a general understanding of what a “free country” would look like, and some general acceptance, or at least tolerance, of the concept, restoring the second amendment will be extremely difficult. In fact it would “not make sense” to most people, who are so accustomed to, and even invested in, the Roman (authoritarian) system.

    • Every analogy fails at the margins. An analogy that works fine in the middle of the field falls apart when pushed to an extreme. No analogy is perfect, and that’s partly what lawyers argue about using analogies between the fact patterns in various cases that are related to the issue at hand.
      But analogies are useful techniques of comparing and contrasting,. and this analogy is fine as far as it goes.

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