A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep an bear Arms, shall not be infringed. (Second Amendment)
No rational person believes the government will take away their automobile because they (the government) restricts them from driving drunk, parking in red zones, or traveling on the left side of the street. Nor do they believe they'll eventually loose their vehicle to the government because they are required pass a drivers test, and have a driver's license, before they can legally drive. No one believes enforceable restrictions on driving are an assault on their rights to own and to drive their car or truck. (Yes, yes, driving is a privilege, not a constitutionally guaranteed right.)
But switch the subject to gun ownership. Now normally rational people believe any restriction on gun sales, background checks, or certain type of large capacity magazines are an invitation for the federal government to enter homes and confiscate personal firearms. Sound ridiculous? Not to gun rights advocates.
Consider the proposed ban on military type assault rifles. Or the proposal to require background checks on purchases at gun shows and between private citizens. And finally, limiting the sale of large capacity magazines appears to gun rights people a death sentence for the second amendment rights. (See the second amendment reproduced at the top of this essay.)
Do any of the words in the amendment suggest you'll lose your second amendment rights if the state or federal governments have restrictions on the type or manner of gun ownership? People who promote this lame thinking rely on scare tactics bolstered by the National Rifle Association's Vice President, Wayne LaPierre. NRA's logic goes thus: any restrictions or barriers to owning guns are more grease on the slippery slope of an ultimate ban on all gun ownership.
I believe the NRA has gone off the rails of logic. LaPierre wants people to believe the idea that background checks of prospective gun purchasers will create a national data base of gun owners so that guns may be confiscated should the need arrive. These and other distortions the NRA promotes resulted recently in a run on gun sales never before seen in our history. This makes me wonder if the gun manufacturers in America employ the NRA as its promotional arm. The NRA's plan: frighten people with lies and hyperbole and they will line up like sheep and stop any reasonable gun control at the polls.
Consider this fact, in 2010 the NRA paid Wayne LaPierre $835,000 in salary and $126,000 in other compensation. Where might all this money come from? Gun manufacturers and NRA members, perhaps.
In 2008 and 2010, the Supreme Court ruled that the Second Amendment protects an individual's right to possess a firearm, "unconnected to service in a militia [and to use that arm for traditionally lawful purposes, such as self-defense within the home within many longstanding prohibitions and restrictions on firearms possession listed by the Court as being consistent with the Second Amendment."
