Now that's funny; is this an adaptation of a True Fan test?
Here's what you know about me; that I disagreed with you that government require your showing a basic proficiency with the weapon you intend to carry into the public.
Since 1993 or '94, I've argued on behalf of the 2ndA on constitutional grounds, engaging more intelligent prohibitionists and control advocates than you. In 25+ years, I've actually bothered to read a multitude of books on the subject and dozens of papers from people like Don Kates - who's single-handedly done more in the effort than anyone since the Founders - eclipsing even the NRA's S. Halbrook (who is a genuine constitutional scholar of notable magnitude), and Polsby, Cramer, Kopel, Malcolm, and at least a couple dozen others. These are actual constitutional scholars and proponents of the 2A, not because they're nutty about guns and can't wait to get this month's "The Rifleman", but because they're objective adherents to constitutional principle.
At least several thousand hours arguing, including ill-informed hunters, gun-owners, and RKBA defender that stated such things as "but no one needs or should have an assault rifle" types...yeah,
except that's exactly the kind of weapon the 2A is intended to protect.
Tell me, by what constitutional basis do you assert government cannot make that simple, lowest common denominator requirement of YOU? In order to do so, you must claim that all rights are infinite; they are not. I demonstrated with examples of other rights limitations, and that should have clicked. And we have a history of gun control by government that refutes the notion that regulation is some new-fangled thing that sprouted from the 1960s.
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Stephen Halbrook certainly takes an expansive view of the RKBA, but acknowledges that history:
The right to keep and bear arms in Virginia is guaranteed by both the state and federal constitutions. Article I, section 13, of the Virginia Constitution provides in part: ‘‘That a well regulated militia, composed of the body of the people, trained to arms, is the proper, natural, and safe defense of a free state, therefore, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed . . . .’’1 The first clause dates to 1776, while the second clause was not adopted until 1971. The Second Amendment to the United States Constitution was adopted in 1791 and provides: ‘‘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.’’2
The right to keep and bear arms has trod a rocky road in Virginia. While antebellum statutes only restricted the carrying of concealed weapons, the slave codes prohibited possession of firearms by African Americans. The latter continued to be enforced at the beginning of Reconstruction, and a pistol registration scheme adopted during the Jim Crow era had similar aims.
The Virginia Declaration of Rights of 1776, authored by George Mason, did not include a specific clause recognizing a right to bear arms, but that right was implicit in the following: That a well-regulated militia, composed of the body of the people, trained to arms, is the proper, natural, and safe defense of a free state; that standing armies, in time of peace, should be avoided as dangerous to liberty; and that in all cases the military should be under strict subordination to, and governed by, the civil power.5
In 1838, Virginia enacted its first concealed-weapon restriction: ‘‘If a free person, habitually, carry about his person hid from common observation, any pistol, dirk, bowie knife, or weapon of the like kind, he shall be fined fifty dollars. The informer shall have one half of such fine.’’19 Law enforcement officers were not exempt----the Virginia high court affirmed the conviction of a constable who ‘‘drew out a pistol and dirk’’ against one merely to levy an execution.2
Registration and an annual tax of one dollar per pistol or revolver were enacted in 1926 in Virginia.29 https://www.stephenhalbrook.com/law_review_articles/right_to_bear_arms_in_the_VA_constitution.pdf
We see that government not only banned ownership of firearms by blacks, but broadly banned concealed arms to everyone, and registered pistols; did Virginia violate the constitutional right or does government have the power to regulate firearms so long as the regulation is not overly burdensome or prohibitory? Certainly the right to bear arms, or even own them, was not infinite or inviolate in Virginia.
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An anomaly? Hardly:
As Adam Winkler, a constitutional-law scholar at U.C.L.A., demonstrates in a remarkably nuanced new book, “Gunfight: The Battle Over the Right to Bear Arms in America,” firearms have been regulated in the United States from the start. Laws banning the carrying of concealed weapons were passed in Kentucky and Louisiana in 1813, and other states soon followed: Indiana (1820), Tennessee and Virginia (1838), Alabama (1839), and Ohio (1859). Similar laws were passed in Texas, Florida, and Oklahoma. As the governor of Texas explained in 1893, the “mission of the concealed deadly weapon is murder. To check it is the duty of every self-respecting, law-abiding man.” Russell Korobkin, Author at The Volokh Conspiracy
A 1783 Massachusetts statute declared that "the depositing of loaded Arms in the Houses of the Town of Boston, is dangerous" and provided for fine and forfeiture for anyone keeping a loaded firearm in "any Dwelling-House, Stable, Barn, Out-house, Ware-house, Store, Shop, or other Building. And others here:
https://ir.lawnet.fordham.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=4021&context=flr
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Don Kates:
Therefore, my Michigan article concluded that gun registration and licensing are not per se repugnant to the second amendment.[27] So long as the purpose and intent is not to restrict or diminish the availability of firearms to the virtuous citizenry--and so long as such requirements are structured so as not to unduly burden or restrict that access[28] --the second amendment allows arms registration and licensing.(p.149)
Nothing in Professor Halbrook's linguistic evidence, however, gainsays the fact that, from early common law, the right to carry arms abroad was not absolute--as was the right to possess ordinary arms in the home.
I do not mean to imply that the second amendment would allow an unqualified prohibition of the bearing of arms outside one's own premises. At the very least the right to "keep" arms implies some right to carry them, for example, to and from a target range.[31] Moreover, since the right to "bear" is also guaranteed, some more general right to carry must be contemplated. This reading does not necessarily render invalid the present American legal pattern which conditions carrying either on the weapon being unconcealed or on the possession of a carry permit.[32] What it does imply, however, is very substantial limitations on the arbitrariness with which permit applications have traditionally been handled. At the very least, police agencies are not free either to limit permits to the wealthy, influential, or politically powerful, or to categorically deny them to all persons.
THE SECOND AMENDMENT: A DIALOGUE
OTOH, it was common for states
to require the citizen to purchase and keep firearms and ammunition, and appear armed if summoned for militia service. That's a pretty extraordinary example of gun regulation demonstrating the length government may go to, in order to ensure the public safety.
Keep in mind, the 2A like the other amendments in the Bill of Rights, is a restriction on the federal government. Though the amendment has been incorporated under the 14thA, SCOTUS has concerned itself with cases of either outright or de facto bans, not whether any regulation amounts to infringement. If that happens, I think it will be a disappointment to gun rights absolutists but will not give comfort to prohibitionists either, and fall along jurisprudence of a valid public interest by government.
Precedent (above) is clear; government can not only require CC licensing, but ban the practice altogether. Do I think they
should ban CC? No. Do I think a legal argument can be made that your "right" to carry is in the public interest and within the purview of government, including requiring CC license? Hell, yeah, and I've a constitutional and historical basis for the conclusion. And I think gun advocates are silly for taking up this mantle.
Fearing what government
could do is not justification to say government may do nothing. That includes registration, something I would oppose based upon the potential for abuse, but certainly not something I can claim deprives me of owning guns or is so onerous as to deprive me of the right.
Which bring us back to your angry-child reactions over simply having someone not agree with your uneducated opinion. In fact, what have you contributed toward preserving the right, at least insofar as your shallow understanding goes? Aside from labeling someone "
pathetic and a poor excuse for an American...(who) looks to government for my safety, ask them to restrict my rights, etc." for not being equally ignorant? You represent the worst element of RKBA advocacy, a reactive slob rabidly shooting friendlies in the back.
