The good doctor said something I agree with today:
Rice said she favored background checks and controls at gun shows. However, she added, 'we have to be very careful when we start abridging rights that the Founding Fathers thought very important.'If only everyone agreed with that last line, the first line would have a different context. If it weren't for the fact that there are almost endless devotees of the principle of disarming Americans, including not just Congressional lobbying groups but the United Nations' entire bureaucracy, we could have a different discussion about "checks and controls."
Rice said the Founding Fathers understood 'there might be circumstances that people like my father experienced in Birmingham, Ala., when, in fact, the police weren't going to protect you.'
'I also don't think we get to pick and choose from the Constitution,' she said in the interview, which was taped for airing Wednesday night. 'The Second Amendment is as important as the First Amendment.'
A government that took the Second Amendment seriously would enjoy a lot more trust when it thought it proper to regulate the expression of that amendment. Not perfect trust, of course, any more than any of us really trust them to regulate the First Amendment -- everyone from the ACLU to right wing bloggers agrees that the gov't can only be trusted just so far.
Still, even Second Amendment absolutists would probably agree to a national version of the Concealed Carry Permit -- a shall-issue permit that allowed carry anywhere in the United States, but in exchange for submitting to background checks and fingerprinting (at least for the purposes of the check; some states retain and others destroy the fingerprints after the check is complete). Such a government program, regulations based on a recognition that you have a right to keep and bear arms, would be broadly acceptable.
Indeed, it's possible that people might even feel comfortable enough to go further, if they could trust that the government really intended to respect the right rather than trying to regulate it away. Gun manufacturers could view government as a partner rather than an opponent, a force to help them get quality weapons to honest citizens instead of a force trying to run them out of business and possibly send them to prison.
Unhappily, we aren't there. There are too many people whose real interest is in infringing the Second.
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