A Two-Guns-Per-Person Limit Would Protect Americans’ Lives and Liberty

[TomSea]

A Two-Guns-Per-Person Limit Would Protect Americans’ Lives and Liberty
By Doug Pennington

The 27 words of the Second Amendment don’t say anything about how many guns someone can own in America. Neither do the other 7,564 words in the Constitution. Yes, this is a facile point to make. A lot of things—including rights, responsibilities, and government powers we take for granted—aren’t itemized in the Constitution. While saying you can’t find something doesn’t necessarily mean anything, conservatives use this trick all the time. Consider marriage equality, a precept protected by the Constitution’s Equal Protection and Due Process clauses. That’s the case even though the Constitution doesn’t include the words, There shall be no discrimination by government in recognition of any marriage on the basis of race or sexual orientation.

This means a couple of things in the gun debate. First, the Constitution and its text are a starting point, not an end point, for determining what gun regulations federal, state, and local governments may pass. Second, though the Constitution’s open-ended provisions are rooted in the time of their drafting, the task of understanding them and applying them has been left to later generations. Federal courts have taken tentative, though momentous, steps in recent years to decide what the Second and 14th amendments mean in terms of gun laws. But in the wake of the slaughter in Las Vegas, some commentators appear to have lost their minds about just how far the courts have gone. No, we don’t have to repeal the Second Amendment to pass strong gun laws—Section III of the Supreme Court’s landmark 2008 Heller decision is all you have to read to figure that out.

Continued at: http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/jurisprudence/2017/10/a_two_guns_per_person_limit_would_protect_americans_lives_and_liberty.html

[skeeter]

But here in 2017, how many firearms does the average American need to competently defend her residence? For whom would, say, a 10-shot semi-automatic pistol and a six-round 12-gauge pump action shotgun not suffice for home defense?

The writer starts from a false assumption. The point is the 2nd amendment was intended as a check on the government, not burglers or maurading racists.

Government knows this full well, and once we allow them to begin making arbitrary infringements on those rights then we can kiss them goodbye after not very long.

[andy58-in-nh]

Dear Mr. Pennington:

Which 8 of my 10 currently-owned firearms do you suggest taking away from me? More to the point, in what manner do you propose to do so? By sending the State Police door-to-door, confiscation orders in hand? Or would you prefer the National Guard? The Army, perhaps?

Like me, many Americans own more than two firearms, your phony statistics notwithstanding (they include Federal Firearms-licensed dealers who own hundreds of guns solely for the purpose of selling them).

Do not delude yourself with fantasies likely born of having spent your life in Blue State America.

Any attempt at confiscation will result in violence, and quite possibly, civil war.

Leave us alone. Instead, try to figure out who and whose ideology is responsible for the sick, perverse culture that degrades and devalues human life in America, and who on the other hand, is trying to save and protect it.

[Elderberry]

My collection of guns started with a .22 rifle given to me by my grandfather. My mother didn't even allow a bb gun in the house at that time. I had to keep it at my grandparents house.
I used it for squirrel hunting. Then came a shotgun, also for hunting. Then rifles for deer hunting. Then pistols to teach myself pistol marksmanship. Then hunting pistols. For protection I had the shotgun in my truck and a M1Carbine for the house. I carried a pistol for protection only while hunting. It is only recently have I carried a pistol for self protection. To me, for most of my life, owning firearms has all been about hunting and the joy of shooting. Two weapons doesn't even come close.

[Texas Yellow Rose]

Doug Pennington  https://theusconstitution.org/about/people/staff/doug-pennington
Is this the same Doug Pennington? Looks like it.

DOUG PENNINGTON

Director of Communications
Doug is Constitutional Accountability Center’s Director of Communications. From 2010-2016, he served as CAC's Press Secretary. Prior to joining CAC, Doug served as Assistant Director of Communications for the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, as well as Media Relations Director for American Rights at Work. Doug’s writing has appeared in several outlets including the Cincinnati Enquirer, New York Times, Washington Post, and POLITICO. Doug’s prior work includes having helped manage the gun violence prevention movement’s response to the massacre at Virginia Tech – which, at that time, had sustained the most fatalities by a single shooter in American history – as well as the media strategy around the landmark Second Amendment cases District of Columbia v. Heller and McDonald v. City of Chicago. Doug is a graduate of the University of Cincinnati with a degree in linguistics (high honors).

I wish Pennington would try and tell his two-gun idea to my 92 year old, WWII vet dad.

[Taxcontrol]

If the second amendment can be limited to two guns then the first amendment can be limited to 2 books or newspapers.   

[andy58-in-nh]

Doug Pennington  https://theusconstitution.org/about/people/staff/doug-pennington
Is this the same Doug Pennington? Looks like it.

DOUG PENNINGTON

Director of Communications
Doug is Constitutional Accountability Center’s Director of Communications. From 2010-2016, he served as CAC's Press Secretary.

The CAC is a project of the Wallace Global Fund, named after Henry A. Wallace, the Progressive Party candidate for President of the United States in 1948.

So, if you thought "I'll take 'Progressives, Socialists and Communists' for $500, Alex", you guessed right.
 

[HoustonSam]

Consider marriage equality, a precept protected by the Constitution’s Equal Protection and Due Process clauses. That’s the case even though the Constitution doesn’t include the words, There shall be no discrimination by government in recognition of any marriage on the basis of race or sexual orientation.

This means a couple of things in the gun debate. First, the Constitution and its text are a starting point, not an end point, for determining what gun regulations federal, state, and local governments may pass.

Pennington argues that where the Constitution does *not* say "There shall be no discrimination by government in recognition of any marriage on the basis of race or sexual orientation", it *does* mean that, and where it *does* say "The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed", it does *not* mean that.  This is prima facia absurd.  I am hard pressed to find a clearer example of progressives simply projecting into the Constitution their own wishes in complete disregard for what it actually requires.

And @Taxcontrol has it exactly right - when Pennington acknowledges that his First Amendment rights can be limited to him publishing only two articles, then he can tell me that my Second Amendment rights can be limited to my owning only two guns.

[Free Vulcan]

[Right_in_Virginia]

If the second amendment can be limited to two guns then the first amendment can be limited to 2 books or newspapers.   

 :thumbsup3:

[GtHawk]

If the second amendment can be limited to two guns then the first amendment can be limited to 2 books or newspapers.   

How about two articles or stories to journalists and authors, two abortions to women, two pleadings of the 5th to politicians, only two instances of due process to criminals, just think what could be accomplished by applying this to all our other enumerated rights!

[Sanguine]

So, if the creep at the Mandalay had been limited to legally owning only two weapons that wouldn't have happened?   

[Cyber Liberty]

@TomSea

Do you have a point to make in posting this heavily biased article from the far left-wing Slate, Tom?  I don't see any comments from you here.

[Frank Cannon]

Bleh. Who cares what this clown says. He makes a living fighting the 2nd Amendment.....

Doug Pennington
Director of Communications

Doug is Constitutional Accountability Center’s Director of Communications. From 2010-2016, he served as CAC's Press Secretary. Prior to joining CAC, Doug served as Assistant Director of Communications for the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, as well as Media Relations Director for American Rights at Work. Doug’s writing has appeared in several outlets including the Cincinnati Enquirer, New York Times, Washington Post, and POLITICO. Doug’s prior work includes having helped manage the gun violence prevention movement’s response to the massacre at Virginia Tech – which, at that time, had sustained the most fatalities by a single shooter in American history – as well as the media strategy around the landmark Second Amendment cases District of Columbia v. Heller and McDonald v. City of Chicago. Doug is a graduate of the University of Cincinnati with a degree in linguistics (high honors).

[InHeavenThereIsNoBeer]

I could get behind this.  I don't believe any person has a reason to be holding more than two guns at once.  It's just awkward. 

[IsailedawayfromFR]

Can't these people read the words "shall not be infringed" or are they just illiterate?

[Elderberry]

I could get behind this.  I don't believe any person has a reason to be holding more than two guns at once.  It's just awkward.

Two guns at once can be a double handfull.

[Smokin Joe]

Two guns? Cool!

I want one of these out front,

and I'm thinking something more self-propelled for the back.

In the meantime I'll keep my rifles, shotguns and pistols inside.

[Free Vulcan]

I want one of these out front,

and I'm thinking something more self-propelled for the back.

I know a guy who knows a guy...

[Smokin Joe]

I know a guy who knows a guy...

^-^