2nd Amendment thoughts

As a very avid hunter and gun owner this one really touches my heart.  I often get asked if I favor totally de-regulating the gun market and making ownership available to anyone.  The answer is a bit complex but in a nutshell yes I do.  Here are some reasons why.

I believe to answer this question you must first know what the 2nd Amendment really is.  The Supreme Court recently found that the right is one of individuals.  Why did they do this?  If we look back in history we find Thomas Jefferson saying "the strongest reason for the people to retain the right to keep and bear arms is, as a last resort, to protect themselves against tyranny in government."  It is immediately clear that our founding fathers meant for the people to stay armed.  Had they not been armed we may well still be under the British Crown.  

One common theme I hear is that we need stronger gun laws to prevent crimes.  Recently our state legislature took up this issue.  Here are some of the findings.  They quit allowing concealed carry permits to be displayed to all law enforcement on the Crime Information Computer because people who had a permit were extremely unlikely to commit a crime.  The fiscal note for the elimination of carry permits found that when someone was found committing a crime with a concealed weapon they had invariably already committed other crimes than just the possession of the weapon.  This means our current legal gun owners are following the laws.

We already have laws to keep guns out of the hands of felons.  Felons are not allowed the right to vote or possess firearms.  This is a sort of lifetime sentencing which allows the convicted to retain certain civil rights and avoid a life in prison while still being punished.  I support this fully.  There are also a multitude of other crimes which are inherently wrong and against our criminal code without the need to address gun ownership.  Murder, armed robbery, and assault are just a few.  We have gun laws in place to prevent people from possessing a gun when they commit these crimes but the criminals always seem to find a gun when needed.  Again Jefferson said "laws that forbid the carrying of arms..disarm only those who are neither inclined nor determined to commit crimes. Such laws make things worse for the assaulted and better for the assailants; they serve rather to encourage than prevent homicides, for an unarmed man may be attacked with greater confidence than an armed one."

We see that the real problem with gun violence is the failure to prevent the crimes in the first place and the failure of the justice department to punish those crimes.  The only true way to make our communities safer is to hire police officers whose only interest is protecting the public and appointing judges whose only interest is punishing crime.  My owning an "assault rifle" doesn't make my community less safe.  It does make my home very unsafe for a potential burglar.

So do I favor de-regulating the gun market?  Yes.  Absolutely.  Why should I have to pay for a right, or jump through hoops for a right, or, God forbid, give up the right so our police can avoid having to enforce things that are already illegal?

Robert Petrowsky