Supreme Court strikes down gun ban

[gillibean]

High court affirms gun rights in historic decision - Yahoo! News

WASHINGTON - Silent on central questions of gun control for two centuries, the Supreme Court found its voice Thursday in a decision affirming the right to have guns for self-defense in the home and addressing a constitutional riddle almost as old as the republic over what it means to say the people may keep and bear arms.

The court's 5-4 ruling struck down the District of Columbia's ban on handguns and imperiled similar prohibitions in other cities, Chicago and San Francisco among them. Federal gun restrictions, however, were expected to remain largely intact.

 

[GraceAbounds]

This was posted in the Lastest News Forum already.

But I'll gladly *clap* in this thread as well. LOL!

 

[gillibean]

Whoops! I wondered why no one had posted about this already!

 

[All Else Failed]

Good.

 

[ssl]

You may have a right do bear arms, but it is a privileged one; one that is not to be taken lightly, or even medium rare. With great power comes great responsibility.

 

[IntruderLS1]

It's amazing it took this long, and it's amazing the vote was so close. That's just creepy.

 

[ssl]

It's amazing it took this long, and it's amazing the vote was so close. That's just creepy.

For real. :willy_nilly:

 

[Hans]

If you have children or anyone mentally unstable ammo+weapon should be held in different areas. Otherwise, Im sure you can be mature enough to keep a loaded gun. Im pretty sure my family has like 10 here...fucking hicks :\

 

[Hans]

That is so incredibly idiotic. Why would you expose a child to a fire arm at that age? That is not safe what so ever, what happens if she figures out how to find bullets/load it?

 

[Minor Axis]

Is Gun Control Good or Bad?

I'm talking about things like registration, background checks, and gun finger printing. Personally I think it's good and I am both a shotgun and hand gun owner.

The Science of Gun Control- Newsweek makes a good argument for both Federal and Local background checks for people purchasing hand guns.

Quote:
In a paper published in the May issue of the American Journal of Preventive Medicine, Steven Sumner, a third-year med student (who conceived the project), and Dr. Peter Layde, codirector of the Injury Research Center at the Medical College of Wisconsin, found that local background checks, which are optional and used by just a handful of states, were more effective than the federal background checks mandated by the Brady law. The report, which has the elegant simplicity of the best research, compared the homicide and suicide rates in states that perform only federal checks with states that do state-level checks and those that perform local-level checks. The local-level checks were associated with a 27 percent lower firearm suicide rate and a 22 percent lower homicide rate among adults 21 and older, the legal age to purchase a gun. (The state checks also reduced gun violence, but by much less.)

I've always been befuddled by the NRA's stance being against all gun legislation despite the fact the police departments around the country support gun fingerprinting. It seems like they feel that gun registration is step 1 and step 3 is "you take my gun away" so they stand against any kind of reasonable rules. Recently I heard about a different gun group called The American Hunters and Shooters Association who seems to have a much more balanced approach to gun control. If I was going to join a gun organization it would be them.