Dave Kopel on the right to arms and the Black experience

Anyone care to comment on the unconstitutionality of the Lautenburg Amendment?

Ms. Kohn has at least figured out that most members of the gun culture don't have horns. That is about all that can be said for her book. It would be a mistake to follow where she leads. She just doesn't get the connection between registration (which she advocates) and confiscation. Common sense to her is absolute foolishness to those of us who believe that the natural right to self-defense exists and is worth protecting.

In a brief response to RKV, I do not advocate registration. I do recognize that confiscation has often followed registration--hence I don't support it. I really don't understand how one could glean that from my position. But since it's apparently unclear, I'll say it again: I absolutely do NOT advocate registration.

Ms. Kohn, Based on your comment in Reason (http://www.reason.com/0505/fe.ak.straight.shtml)
I find it difficult to support your claim that you do not support licensing.



And I quote...
"Records of sale (kept by dealers now in several states, including California) accomplish
most of the benefits of registration without nearly as much of the negative fallout." This is licensing lite. The government has no business whatsoever in knowing what arms a free person owns.



You also say "Instead we need to start thinking about gun control as an attempt to control the black market in firearms." The black market in firearms is an effect of the myriad of unconstitutional laws, which have eroded our fundamental right to self-defense and not a cause in its own right. Those same laws which have as their heritage the business of keeping slaves enslaved I might add.



I know you are attempting to promote a dialog between the pros and the cons on this issue. You must be in a precarious middle ground where you feel both sides are critical of your best efforts to reconcile them. I have also skimmed your book, which does well to capture the humanity of the gun owning public. Thank you for that and for many other positives about your book.



At the end of the day I find myself much more in agreement with Don Kates.
“In other words, the aim is to produce a citizenry deprived of all means of self-defense
so as to be abjectly dependent on a supposedly all-wise, and certainly ever more powerful, government for its security. What compromise with this can there be for people who believe in a strong and independent citizenry, as gun owners do?”

Sir,

I understand how and why you view what I'm suggesting as "licensing lite." I guess we do disagree about policy. But please allow me to explain why I feel the way I do, and why I don't view dealer records of sale as police (or federal) registration.

Firearms dealers are not the same thing as police, or federal agents. Dealers maintain their own records, but as a matter of course, dealers do not make their records of sale freely available to police or federal agents without specific requests, or warrants, regarding a specific gun (i.e., one used in a crime). From a dealer's perspective, making records of sale freely available to police (or offering that information) would be extremely bad for business, and since most firearms dealers want to stay in business, I'm fairly confident they don't offer that information to police routinely. More to the point, police do not routinely avail themselves of dealers' records of sale, nor would they necessarily want to do that. All the records of sale from even one single dealer would amount to a massive amount of information, most of which would be functionally useless to police without a specific gun that can be linked to a specific crime.

Here's the bottom line - police simply do not have the time or inclination to randomly plow through the thousands and thousands of records of sale from all dealers in any given area in a misguided attempt to eventually confiscate certain kinds of guns from people who purchased them legally. As a registration policy, this would be the most profoundly inefficient, functionally useless effort in police history. Police themselves wouldn't stand for it.

Now, do I believe that police should be allowed to request information from dealers about a particular gun that has been traced to a crime? Yes. Viewing a record of sale is an effective way for police to retroactively trace crime guns (at least to a point). Is this a form of "dealer-assisted registration?" I guess you could view it that way, but to me, prohibiting it would be like saying that police should be excluded from collecting any evidence relating to guns and/or ballistics because examining that kind of evidence interferes with a citizen's right to keep guns for self-defense. That's just not a logical argument to me.

That's the clarification of my position. Again, you may view it as registration lite, but I just don't view it that way. Bottom line for me - I do not support the idea that police be allowed to keep records of sale. But I do think that firearms dealers should. I guess you have to draw the line somewhere, and that's where I draw it. Thanks for the discussion.