The NRA likens licensing, etc restrictive and against the spirit of the 2nd Admentment.
Americans have the "right" to own cars - but the government sets restrictions on how it can be driven, the necessary requirements to drive, and the necessary financial reserve needed in case of an accident (aka Insurance)
Guns are no different than a car - sure you can have one, but its perfectly 'ok' for the government to set guidelines to having one.
...so take THAT NRA!
--I actually agree with your logic Rick.
It's the actual application that I worry about.
Although I bark and whine a lot (above) about how "the battle isn't over" I can see why there is a need for regulation and common sense. My rational side tells me it's crazy to let anyone just go buy an AK-47, but here's an example of what irks me about the folks who like to do the "regulating".
Let's use the car analogy, and go to the state of Maryland.
When I last visited my home state (grew up in Bethesda)
the highway patrol and county mounties were pulling people over for "pop inspections" and issuing massively priced citations for things like:
"bumper one and one half inches above stock height"
"inspection sticker fourteen millimeters too far to the right on windshield"
"faded taillight lens"
"exhaust tips protruding two inches beyond allowable distance
from rear of vehicle"
I could go on and on, but the point I'm making is that Maryland has turned into the poster child for overly aggressive en-FORCE-ment with aggro cops bristling with hair-trigger
mentalities and anyone who has lived and commuted there will tell you that owning a car in The Old Line state is almost as easy as owning a gun in the District of Columbia.
The abuses are well beyond what can be termed ridiculous and they're no longer just "isolated cases", any more than Doug Thompson's recounting of the over-amped LEO's on Blue Ridge Parkway in Virginia.
I'm just not real anxious to watch a new era ushered in where
any and all excuses are used to regulate guns literally to the point where the gun owner simply turns them in out of frustration at a never-ending series of abuses designed to drain them financially for merely owning a firearm.
What if the states start deciding that all gun owners should be required to purchase annual "firearm insurance" at a cost in the tens of thousands of dollars?
Suuuuuure sonny boy, we don't want to infringe upon your
kon-stit-too-shunnal raghts, we jis wanna make shur yew all
gots yer gun insurance is all in case yew killz yer-self a child.I'm so sure something like this will be piggybacked on something called....ummmm....let's see..."Billy's Law", in memory of little Billy Fartsenberger, who was senselessly killed while snooping through the closet of his playmate's Dad when he found an unloaded pistol, then found the ammunition, then loaded the gun and turned it on himself as a joke in front of his friend.
