Way to go Pubbies, you blow gun owners a kiss with one hand while you stab us in the back with the other. Bush and a bunch of Pubbie congressmen wouldn't be in office today if not for the votes of millions of gun owners who were fed up with the Democrat's unconstitutional gun laws. For that we keep getting our teeth kicked in by the same people we put in office. But I guess that's supposed to be OK because Ashcroft said he believes in the 2nd Amendment. Or maybe he was talking about some other 2nd Amendment the rest of us don't know about.
I don't personally have any desire to own either a Tec-9 or a Streetsweeper, but I will defend any law-abiding American's very clear Constitutional right to own as many of them as he or she can afford.
Law-abiding? LAW-ABIDING?
That's just a term of art. You, me or anybody else can be made a felon in the blink of an eye by the simple stroke of a politician's pen.
The Second Amendment doesn't say:
One of the natural law justifications underlying the Second Amendment is the right of self-defense; and just because somebody has a criminal record doesn't mean that his right to defend himself is null and void.
I think that the commission of criminal acts with firearms (and not mere firearms possession) should be the only basis on which any firearms-related prosecution should EVER be based.
The only way that a proscription on the possession of arms can be justified is if the assumption is made that one will do something criminal with them in the future- and the last time I checked, Miss Clio wasn't working for the ATF.
By this cockeyed reasoning the fact that we possess firearms makes all Future Felons of America and presto-chango, don't watch the rights as they disappear- we therefore can be justifiably disarmed.
I'm old enough to remember the concept of what used to be called an "ex-felon".