'One gun a month': rationing Constitutional rights

March 31, 3:39 AMSt. Louis Gun Rights ExaminerKurt Hofmann

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I have recently been discussing, one at a time, the various approaches the forcible citizen disarmament lobby takes in pursuing its agenda.  Today, we'll look at "one gun a month" laws.  The idea behind such legislation is that if limited to buying only one gun per month, an aspiring gun trafficker will be unable to efficiently ply his illicit trade, and gun trafficking will thus be significantly curtailed.  Generally, in order to make the legislation more palatable, it's written to apply only to handgun purchases--the thinking, apparently, being to give "pro-sportsmen" politicians some cover in voting for it; "See, I'm not interfering with hunters--I just want to regulate those nasty handguns."

Even with that strategy, efforts to pass such laws have not done all that well.  To my knowledge, only three states have passed them (well--four, actually, but South Carolina repealed its version of the law in 2004, after determinining that it was not effective in reducing crime).  In notoriously anti-gun New Jersey, for example, the gun haters have pushed hard for such a law without success.  The Illinois House of Representatives might vote on it any day now, but considering the gun haters' defeats last week, it will probably have a rough time.

Of the three states that do have a "one handgun a month" law on the books, one is Virginia--commonly singled out as being at fault for violent crime in New York, because of its "weak gun laws."  My guess is that if the "Mayors Against Illegal Guns" had their way, Virginia (and every other state) would have a "no guns per month" law.

Another is California, which has been identified as the second largest U.S. source of "crime guns" in Mexico (for much more on those statistics, see National Gun Rights Examiner David Codrea's article from yesterday).  One could argue, of course, that these Second Amendment rationing laws (which is, after all, what "one gun a month" laws are) deal with handguns, and that the horrid violence in Mexico is being committed with weapons far more powerful than those, but that ignores the fact that California has the most strict "assault weapons" ban in the history of the nation, which includes even single-shot .50 caliber rifles as banned "assault weapons."

The above, though, misses the point I am trying to make.  Even if limiting purchasers to one handgun per month were effective at reducing crime, that's not how Constitutionally guaranteed, fundamental human rights work.  Lives could presumably be saved by trampling the Fourth Amendment, because more violent would-be murderers could be put away before they wrought their carnage, if the authorities could perform more searches and seizures without the cumbersome due process.  Other killings could be prevented by ignoring Fifth Amendment protections against self-incrimination, etc.

Our rights  are not predicated on whether or not some evil people will abuse them.  Tyrannical societies very often have very little street crime, but that does not make them good places to live.