Reply #24: No, the San Fran ban was found to contradict California state law... [View All]

[benEzra]

If I'm not mistaken, wasn't there just a ruling on San Francisco's gun laws, that they violated the Constitutional 2nd Amendment? I don't think states can make any gun law they want, they can't violate individual rights outlined in the Constitution and I wouldn't want them to. Seems to me that's why we are going to have to strike some kind of national balance.

No, the San Fran ban was found to contradict California state law, and was slapped down by the California supreme court. The California legislature passed a law many years ago that prohibits localities from banning guns. The advocates of the San Fran ban knew their statute was illegal under CA law, but passed it anyway. FWIW, one of the people behind the ban at that time was then-mayor Dianne Feinstein.

I don't know what the NRA position on every single gun law is.

The NRA supports heavy restrictions on all automatic weapons, burst-mode weapons, firearms over .50 caliber (except shotguns), cut-down rifles and shotguns, disguised firearms (cell phone guns, cane guns), explosives, and ordnance. Plus armor-piercing handgun ammunition prohibited, hypothetical X-ray-transparent guns prohibited, etc. Background checks for purchase, possession by criminals absolutely prohibited, strict controls on the use of lethal force (i.e., only in justified self-defense), and license required to carry as determined at the state level.

What we gunnies have a problem with is the fixation with piling additional, pointless restrictions on the law-abiding, when gun violence is the purview of the NON-law-abiding who violate EXISTING law with impunity. Most of the perpetrators of gun violence are people who cannot legally so much as touch a single round of ammunition. Making it a felony for me to own a rifle with the stock shaped a certain way doesn't do anything about the 20-year-old who shoots the convenience-store clerk with a .38 revolver.

The prohibitionists really crossed the line in the early '90s when they tried to ban all firearms holding over 10 rounds, or rifles with the stock shaped a certain way. Leave the line where it is, as it pertains to the law-abiding, and we gun owners will be pretty happy.

However, I do know there are at least individuals who believe the 2nd Amendment means there should be absolutely no gun laws.

There are also individuals who want to ban all guns, but they are a fringe just like the people you describe, and have absolutely NOTHING to do with the gun issue as it stands in 2006.

They are the kind who muddy the gun issue at election time by claiming the entire Democratic Party wants to confiscate all the guns just like the people who say Democrats want to burn all the Bibles.

Any fringe perception that "the entire Democratic party wants to confiscate all the guns" is absolutely irrelevant to the gun issue as it affects elections. What hurt the party so badly 1994-2004 wasn't what a few fringe people might have claimed about the party, but rather what the party leadership was saying--that they would fight hard to ban all civilian firearms holding over 10 rounds, civilian rifles and shotguns with handgrips that stick out, and anything else the gun-prohibition lobby tagged with a sufficiently scary name. THAT is what is hurting the party among gun owners, not some imaginary perception that Dems want to take away traditional-looking duck guns from the tiny percentage of gun owners who hunt ducks.