So much for the "pesky Second Amendment" argument...
Nicholas Kristoff shreds that favorite little jab at sensible gun control by pro-gun activists in today's NYT
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/31/opinion/nicholas-kristof-our-blind-spot-about-guns.html?ref=opinion&_r=0
The relevant paragraphs are here:
"Whenever I write about the need for sensible regulation of guns, some readers jeer: Cars kill people, too, so why not ban cars? Why are you so hypocritical as to try to take away guns from law-abiding people when you don’t seize cars?
That question is a reflection of our national blind spot about guns. The truth is that we regulate cars quite intelligently, instituting evidence-based measures to reduce fatalities. Yet the gun lobby is too strong, or our politicians too craven, to do the same for guns. So guns and cars now each kill more than 30,000 in America every year.
One constraint, the argument goes, is the Second Amendment. Yet the paradox is that a bit more than a century ago, there was no universally recognized individual right to bear arms in the United States, but there was widely believed to be a “right to travel” that allowed people to drive cars without regulation.
A court struck down an early attempt to require driver’s licenses, and initial attempts to set speed limits or register vehicles were met with resistance and ridicule. When authorities in New York City sought in 1899 to ban horseless carriages in the parks, the idea was lambasted in The New York Times as “devoid of merit” and “impossible to maintain.”
It is good for us to remember what Kristoff is recounting here and to remind those opposing our efforts to sensible gun regulation of our own history when it comes to reconciling rights and common sense precautions. Constitutional protection of rights has not been offended in the past, when "right to travel" is interpreted as part of a broader First Amendment (and perhaps other rights listed in the B of R) issue.
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