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But you mean this in a purely legal sense, right? "shall not be infringed", etc. because it says so in the 2A and that's that.
Curious if you'd feel the same way if the amendment explicitly covered any scale of weapon, up to and including planet-ending weapons of mass destruction.
No, I mean it in a practical sense of "whether I can legally buy and carry a gun". Once you start agreeing that background checks are OK, there's no fence on that slope; the OP already got to invasive background checks and even psych exams, for crying out loud. A psych exam to exercise a right? When a lot of psychiatrists are straight-up anti-gun? That's obviously a vitiation of the right.
I mean, that's ultimately a process violation and objection though, not a fundamental one. A background check is simply a method (and the only real one?) so as to enforce an already existing, reasonable, and constitutional limit on felons or other prohibited persons owning guns.
An inability to find a pro-gun psychiatrist would of course be an objection, but one on facts and merits, not principle.
No, it is not. It is prior restraint. It is as reasonable as having the government vet political speeches beforehand to ensure they contain no calls for imminent lawless action.
I mean, it's practical for the government to police unlawful speeches after the fact insofar as they would be justified in doing so (i.e. rarely). But you only buy a gun once, and the government needs to know you bought the gun to run the check. Are you proposing letting someone buy the gun, and then doing the check? Seems obviously flawed. I'd add that of course such a check should be done in a reasonable and timely manner, or the law is invalid/illegal/wrong/not to be enforced. For similar-ish reasons, although I view the right to protest as pretty fundamental right, it's also a realm where requiring a permit is not baseline illegal to me, or trampling on any rights. There's plenty of other stuff that, while not as hallowed as a right, are still bureaucratically necessary to approve in advance instead of retrospectively, from food handler's permits to driver's licenses to becoming a schoolteacher. I will cop to supporting short (think 1-7 days) mandatory waiting periods, but wouldn't really be too sad if they weren't a thing (and wouldn't be bothered in principle by smartly implemented mandatory waiting periods for other things, either, like major medical decisions or whatnot). All of this is in a background of not being too bothered by guns themselves floating around society like they always have, and like really quite a lot of Americans (even borderline brainwashed ones if you interrogate them closely), I'm no closet abolitionist, far from it.
No, I'm proposing someone buys the gun, and if the police happen to find out the person was prohibited, they can prosecute then. No special police-state powers related to guns, any more than they get every utterance referred to them for possible prosecution (yes, the NSA wants almost that, but that's generally considered a bad thing).
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