Shall the City ban the manufacture, distribution, sale and transfer of firearms and ammunition within San Francisco, and ban City residents from possessing handguns within San Francisco?The measure passed with 57% voting in favor, 42% opposed. According to the San Francisco Chronicle, San Francisco joins two other cities in the nation that have enacted such a ban, Washington, D.C. and Chicago. San Franciscans have until April 1 to turn any guns they possess over to the police.
I’m just wondering how that plays against the US Constitution, Amendment III:
A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.So isn’t banning gun possession infringing “the right of the people to keep and bare arms?” Have the Chicago or DC laws have been challenged in court?
My take, regardless the nobility or debatable effectiveness of the goal, if you want to ban guns then you must repeal the 3rd Amendment. That’s how the law works. We’re familiar with the Right’s underhanded attempts to dismantle the Bill of Rights. I see this as the Left’s attempts to do away with more of our rights, the rights that get in the way of their agenda. The tactic of taking advantage of a liberal local voter base with a local ballot initiative seems no less underhanded. If you want to change the Constitution then do that, but that’s the level where the debate needs to happen. And while personally I don’t greatly value the right to bare arms either, I think if your goal is decreasing gun deaths, that effort would be better spent licensing/training gun owners or fighting poverty than taking their guns away.
What do you think?
I think that San Francisco voters have gone insane. Gun control does not reduce crime. Mandatory sentences for gun crimes will lower crime rates.
I don’t think many violent gun offenders have much awareness of the specific mandatory minimum sentence for their crime. Perhaps if they taught a class in high school on law, crime & punishment, then people might have some knowledge of those sentences. But generally I don’t think the specific length of their possible jail sentence is even in the offender’s consciousness, much less serving as any real deterrent for their violence. “Getting caught” is their deterent. I’m for selecting good judges and letting them do their job, not tying their hands and thereby impeding justice in order to look tough on crime. Mandatory minimums provide the temporary illusion that you’re actually solving problems.