TexasCHLforum.com

frankie_the_yankee wrote:4) No guns in sterile areas. This includes no guns for CHLs in these areas. A sterile area is one protected by armed guards where everyone entering is screened for weapons. My list of allowable sterile areas would be short. Courtrooms and airplanes come to mind, but I am sure that there are some others that could qualify. In essence, I am making a bargain here. You make SURE that no one else has a gun or other weapon, you agree to protect the premesis with ARMED FORCE (i.e. not some stupid sign or policy), and I'll agree to not carry a weapon myself.

Sure, the risk isn't zero, but it never is. In this case it is a tradeoff, and in my opinion a good one.

Which is not what exists now, and I could tell you tales.

frankie_the_yankee wrote:5) The manner of carrying guns can be subject to reasonable regulation by the individual states. To me this would include requiring a permit to carry, as long as it was of the "shall issue" type, allowing carrying without a permit if the state so chooses, allowing for concealed carry, and limiting, but not banning, open carry as the state so chooses.

I would have to respectfully disagree here, Vermont style carry should be the law of the land at a minimum.

frankie_the_yankee wrote:I do not regard any of the above to be unconstitutional "infringements" on the 2nd Amendment.

At the present time, many states limit or even prohibit carrying guns in ways that go far beyond the above and in my view are both unreasonable and unconstitutional. These are the things that we need to work to change.

I regard any infringement to be just that, regardless of degree.

seamusTX wrote:

jimlongley wrote:I can't resolve the dichotomy you presented. If a pistol were inaccurate, how would it be useful for dueling?

My understanding is that they wanted a certain amount of chance, let God decide or something. I've read that most pistol duels ended with no injury or a minor injury. I've also read that some duellers missed intentionally, and sometimes they tried to miss and hit their opponent.

If participants really wanted to kill each other, they would use swords or rifles. (It's not an area that I have a lot of interest in.)

Contemporary accounts refer to people carrying pistols concealed, and not all pistols of the era were as large as you state.

I didn't know that. The few 18th-century pistols that I've seen were quite large.

In any case, the 2nd Amendment does not refer to concealed or open carry; and I'm convinced that the issue is irrelevant.

- Jim

Actually, according to the rules extant at the time, the challenged person had the choice of weapons and swords were just as available, and often used, as guns. The point was not usually to kill, it was to draw blood, and in a sword duel if one duelist scored on the other it was considered cheating to continue.

That said, an inaccurate pistol would be a liability, not an advantage. If your objective was to merely score a hit and you killed you might be ostracized by society.

The dueling pistols I have seen, and the one I have shot, all were as accurate as the state of the art could make them in the day. Loads were worked up for them with as much care as that taken by today's benchrest shooters, rifling was carefully lapped after manufacture in order to achieve the smoothest and sharpest lands possible. Many of them used false muzzles for loading to prevent distortion of the projectile in the loading process. A false muzzle meets the rifling exactly at the real muzzle, and has a slightly tpering internal profile to allow engravement of the rifling in the false muzzle without having the projectile cant to one side or the other.

Even before the 18th century gunsmiths were working at reducing the size of all kinds of guns, admittedly problematic due to the inadequacies of black powder as a propellant as well as the inherent size of a flintlock action. I have seen, and I'm sure there are many pictures of, pistols small enough to fit in one hand from the era.

Also even my old CVA Kentucky pistol (flintlock) would have concealed almost as well as my 1911, merely being a little longer. One thing is that most people think of the old .70 caliber "horse pistol" as exemplary of the typical pistol of the day, and as a smoothbore with hand cast round balls (often not the roundest and with sprues merely cut or filed off) and patches of varying quality, it might be considered to be of questionable accuracy. The problem is that the old "horse pistol" was just the ottom end of the spectrum of handguns available in the era, the "Saturday Night Special" model of 1763 if you will.

My flintlock pistol was a .45 caliber, rifled, and would shoot every bit as accurately in my hands as any other handgun I have ever had, as long as I did my part.

But I do have to thank you for the idea. The next time I MD an IDPA match I may just introduce the shooters to a really strange gun.

patrickstickler wrote:

It seems to me that we are dealing here with a simple matter of degree (a dangerous thing for sure) such that the definition of "competence", whether mental competence, maturity, and in the case of licensure requiring basic safety and skills training, operational
competence, is a basis for self-infringement (at least agreed to, or at best tolerated) by a majority of "the people".

Unconstitutional? It seems so. A bad thing? Unreasonable? Too steep a slippery slope? I'm undecided.

And like the frog in the pot thinking "Well another degree won't hurt." before too long we are way too far down the slope. One degree is too much.

I think that is the crux of the issue, namely if the
choice is between a lukewarm pot and the fire, is
there a means for the frog to retain control of
the stove

Most likley, there isn't.

Ahh, but in our scenario, the frog either has a veto over raising the temperature, ie allowing or even encouraging the license to come into existence, or not even getting into the pot in the first place, ie not even considering the license to be valid restriction on a right.

Hopefully our legislative process is our control over the temperature of the pot.

seamusTX wrote:

frankie_the_yankee wrote:Another point is that the constitution says we have a RKBA, not a RKB *CONCEALED* A. You don't think this little detail was left out by accident, do you?

Pistols of the time were a foot long, single-shot, inaccurate, and pretty much useless for anything other than dueling.

The RKBA also referred to swords. Whatever happened to that?

- Jim

I can't resolve the dichotomy you presented. If a pistol were inaccurate, how would it be useful for dueling?

Actually pistols were accurate enough, given the state of the art, with dueling pistols at the top of the heap. I have owned a couple of original pistols of the era and built a couple of other replicas, and except for the single shot and long reload, I wouldn't hesitate to compete with any of them in IDPA, they are certainly accurate enough for that level of competition.

Contemporary accounts refer to people carrying pistols concealed, and not all pistols of the era were as large as you state.

patrickstickler wrote:It has been argued that the right to drive is implicitly guaranteed by the Constitution, even if not explicitly, e.g.:

Argued, but not decided. You might as well say, and cite Sarah Brady, that it has been argued that the Constitution does not guarantee a right to bear arms.

This gets way too deeply into the living constitution concept for discourse on a forum, subtle nuances of language are inexpressible in text and responses suffer from time lag. Suffice it to say that I don't see having a driver's license as a Constitutional right even if I agree that locomotion may be one. The rights of others gets into the mix, as you acknowledged, and it's that mix of personal rights and the rights of others, combined with public, as opposed to private, roads, and settled issues that bless us with driver's licenses.

OTOH, if the government wants to build "public" ranges where we can shoot anytime we want to as long as we pass a test and get a license (to use the public ranges, not to possess or carry guns in general) then I will be happy to be first in line to get one of those licenses, but those ranges had better be ubiquitous and the license rules will have to apply to everyone that shoots there.

patrickstickler wrote: Still, there are better examples for discussion, in particular the very theme of this thread, the infringement of the 2A right on those who are deemed to be mentally incompetent; as well as convicted felons, the underaged, etc.[/qoute]

I can remember, a lot of years ago now, trying to argue that I had "civil rights" when I was under age, and I was told that those rights only applied to people of voting age. I accepted that concept at the time, but do not really consider it universal now, and was gratified when they moved the voting age to 18 although I was already well over 21. Until the last couple of decades the concept that felons, incompetents, and underage did not enjoy more than a limited subset of Constitutionally guaranteed rights was generally accepted. If you were a felon, you had pretty much voluntarily surrendered your rights, if you were incompetent then you lacked the capability to "enjoy" those rights (and family took care of you under most circumstances) and if you were underage you were kind of in training to avail yourself of those rights when you came of age. What a complicated world we have created by abandoning those simple concepts.

The old First Amendment thing about yelling "FIRE" in a crowded theater is an example. Most people would agree that you have no right to do so unless there is a fire, but I would argue that in today's society while it might not be acceptable to do so, you have every right to, as long as you accept the consequences.

And in that same vein, while "we" are proposing licensing gun owners in what I see as a vain attempt to protect everyone else, let's license journalists too. The past few years have shown many examples of irresponsible journalism causing harm to others and I think it's just common sense to ensure that we get the very best in journalism without allowing those who would abuse the privilege to spread untrue or discordant "news."

I know, reductio ad absurdam, but I had to fit it in somewhere.

patrickstickler wrote:It seems to me that we are dealing here with a simple matter of degree (a dangerous thing for sure) such that the definition of "competence", whether mental competence, maturity, and in the case of licensure requiring basic safety and skills training, operational
competence, is a basis for self-infringement (at least agreed to, or at best tolerated) by a majority of "the people".

Unconstitutional? It seems so. A bad thing? Unreasonable? Too steep a slippery slope? I'm undecided.

And like the frog in the pot thinking "Well another degree won't hurt." before too long we are way too far down the slope. One degree is too much.

patrickstickler wrote:I see no reason to allow such radical, often illogical groups hijack the term, and I certainly do not imply any support for such groups in my use of that term, but perhaps "logical" or "reasonable" would be better, given that logic and reason are testable and hence a better basis for concensus.

Too late! The Brady Bunch and the others already co-opted the term and I refuse to even consider it as anything more than a buzz word now. Who gets to say what "common sense" is?

patrickstickler wrote:It is IMO both logical and reasonable to presume that there are cases where restrictions on rights is justified. The problem, as always, is agreeing on what those restrictions might be, and how such restrictions might be most effectively managed, to the greatest benefit of the "the people".

Unless we can get a very strict ruling and exactly what is logical and how reasonable reasonable is, I even have an argument with them. All of those terms have interpretive implications too easily spun in meaning. I think it's perfectly reasonable for me to have jumped off cliffs, gone into cave, or scuba dived at night in contaminated freezing water. I have done it many times, and if you had observed me in the act you might even think so too, but I sure don't think a lot of the things I did, not just in my youth but in years as a member of a rescue squad, were necessarily logical.

The subjective terms are one of the places where we run into trouble, each of our definitions of logical and reasonable are going to be a little different from each others. Maybe it would only be a little difference in degree, but those degrees add up.

Well, er.. ahem.. in the context of this particular forum and thread,
that quip is a tad bit condescending.

But I do genuinely appreciate your comments and the time
you took to offer them.

I stand by the quip nonetheless.

Don't know why I can't get the quotes to work, they all look right, sorry.

patrickstickler wrote: A drivers license is reasonable because it restricts the use of
vehicles on public roads, which is a priviledge.

Yes, to some extent.

patrickstickler wrote:A CHL is reasonable because it restricts the posession/use of guns (at least concealed) in public, which is (?) a priviledge.

Actually I don't really believe it's reasonable, possession and carry should be Vermont rules and not a privilege at all, it's just the way things are in Texas, which is much better than IL or NY among others.

patrickstickler wrote:A general gun license is unreasonable because it restricts the posession/use of guns on private property, which is a right.

Correct, licensing a right changes it from a right into something less than a right.

patrickstickler wrote:If that's correct, then I guess I'm still confused/unconvinced of a number of points.

I can't imagine why, I felt I was very clear.

patrickstickler wrote:Firstly, if bearing arms is a right, which you make distinct from a"priviledge", then having to apply for and obtain a CHL is just as much an infringement as a general gun license and I would expect you to be just as opposed to a CHL as a general gun license, yet you seem to put in the same category as drivers licenses.

Nope, it's an infringement, just one that I tolerate until we can get Vermont style carry passed in TX.

patrickstickler wrote:Secondly, since public roads are by definition public, i.e. belonging to the people, paid for by the people, wouldn't I then have the right to use them? I don't see where use of anything public is a "priviledge". Is there a constitution-specific definition of "priviledge" and how it is differentiated from a "right"? I'm not really seeing a difference
between driving cars and bearing arms and the peoples' collective rights to impose restrictions on either.

I don't know if there is a "constitution specific" definition, but the usual dictionary definition makes a privilege less than a right. Our Constitutional Rights are (pre-existing) ensured by the Constitution and Bill of Rights and cannot be removed except for cause. A privilege is something that is granted by a higher power and can be removed at will. Thus the state/city/county builds roads and may restrict who may use them, but none of them may, unless we allow them to, which is the case in TX, restrict our carrying of the guns we already own unrestricted.

patrickstickler wrote:Finally, since the goal of such a license, as I proposed (for the sake of discussion, BTW, not because I'm convinced that it is necessarily the way to go) was to simply manage better the restrictions that we all agree are reasonable and desireable (excluding certain persons from those rights) to *help* reduce the potential for tragedies (not presuming that it would be a complete or even primary solution) how does such a license, which would be "shall issue" by definition, actually infringe upon ones 2A rights?

First of all, it's licensing a right, that's an infringement, and do we all really agree as to what is reasonable and desirable? I am a subset of "we all" and I don't agree with this manner and method, nor do I think it's reasonable. It's an infringement, a sacrifice of part of a right just because a few criminals and nuts get ahold of weapons and do things that are already against the law.

And when this licensing scheme doesn't prevent the next massacre, will we take another increment away? No, we tried compromise back in the 60s and all the antis did was ask for more because that didn't work. We had an "assault weapon ban" for ten years, which could not be shown to have any kind of effect at all, and now the antis are dancing in the blood of these most recent victims demanding that it be implemented with even more restrictions. Even one little increment of infringement more is not acceptable.

patrickstickler wrote:It seems to me that both bearing arms and driving are both "rights", but that the people, collectively as a society, choose to impose a degree of self-restriction, or self-infringement which limits those rights to adult, competent, law-abiding individuals, and licensure is a system for managing those "common sense" restrictions.

Nope, driving on a public highway is not a right, see above, although you are welcome to drive on private property to your hearts content without needing a license, it's not a self-restriction, but a tax and fee for the use of the roads. Nowhere does the Constitution guarantee a right to drive.

And nowhere in your "common sense" (a phrase made popular by the Brady Bunch and their predecessors and allies) restrictions is there any guarantee that it will work for your avowed purpose, licensing drivers sure doesn't ensure safety on the public roads, not to mention the people who just go without the license.

patrickstickler wrote:If I've misunderstood your position, or if I'm missing some significant, well established constitutional cornerstone, please correct me.

The well established Constitutional cornerstone is called the Second Amendment.

patrickstickler wrote:

jimlongley wrote:A major fault that I see in your licensing proposal is that you are essentially trying to license a right.

I drove for years before I was even old enough to obtain a driver's license, and the vast majority of that driving was perfectly legal, a driver's license is only required to use public highways, which is essentially what we have with our CHLs, a license to carry in public as opposed to no need for a license to carry on your own private property.

A license to own a firearm, even in your own home, takes you to IL with their FOID, where you have to have a license to own a gun, any gun, or ammunition.

Well, I'll stop posting to this thread because it seems folks are too
busy or passionate to read what I actually wrote. I explicitly stated
that such a license should not in any way restrict rights on private
property, and it would be akin to a drivers license -- i.e. relating
to public possession/use of a gun. Sorry if I wasn't clearer, and
perhaps it was just too long.

So if I comment again in this thread it will be to comments that
pertain to what I originally said rather than just reinterating and correcting
what I already said or didn't say.

I agree with seamusTX that this system is much too hard to use
to respond effectively point by point and does indeed seem to
hinder the kind of active interleaved discussion that occurs in
other forums. But I digress...
more productive.

It seems that you have hoist yourself in your own petard, you hardly could have read MY post carefully if you ignored the thrust of my objection to licensing a right. Driving on public highways, constructed with public monies, is a privilege, keeping and bearing arms, no matter where, is a right.

A major fault that I see in your licensing proposal is that you are essentially trying to license a right.

I drove for years before I was even old enough to obtain a driver's license, and the vast majority of that driving was perfectly legal, a driver's license is only required to use public highways, which is essentially what we have with our CHLs, a license to carry in public as opposed to no need for a license to carry on your own private property.

A license to own a firearm, even in your own home, takes you to IL with their FOID, where you have to have a license to own a gun, any gun, or ammunition. Administrative rules take the place of legislation, if you move, the city, state, or county can see to it that your FOID is "suspended" which is as good as revoked. No conviction is necessary to remove your FOID, just arrest.

If you drive through one of several cities in IL that prohibit the possession of handguns, like driving through Chicago to get from Homewood to Lake Bluff for an IDPA match, and you get caught with a firearm, you will be arrested and you will lose your FOID.

If you get caught with "prohibited ammunition" you will be arrested and you will lose your FOID.

If you get in a tiff with your spouse and the police show up, you will lose your FOID.

And there are any number of other ways you can lose your FOID, most of which are not written into the law.

If you move out of state, but plan on going back to attend IDPA matches with your old buds IL will revoke your FOID, but will call the revocation something else and you will be in violation of IL law if you take a firearm into the state.

If you lose your FOID, for any reason, you must not possess any firearms after that moment, which means you can't even take them to the gun store, pawn shop, or wait for a gun show to sell them, you can't legally possess them, no grace period. If you lose your FOID, the local police are notified, and have been known to show up at gun owners' homes to make sure they didn't handle them.

No, I've lived where gun owners were licensed and know too many other horror stories, I don't like the idea of licensing a right.

Venus Pax wrote:I've read some of the questions they give you in the OBGYN offices and women's clinics.
The does your home have firearms? type questions are right in there with the "Does your husband hit you?" questions.

I can see some of these people putting us on a list for answering yes to the first.

That's what led my former family doctor to try to lecture me on the evils of gun ownership, I objected to the question, wanted to know what business it was of hers, and walked out the door when she started in with the JAMA propoganda. Told her she was fired - you should have seen the look on her face when I said that.

Like I said, after that, if she had the power to do so, I'm sure she would have added me to the list.

I sent her a copy of a manifesto that I have around here somewhere for just such occasions.

I'll have to find it and post it here.

tvone wrote:At that time in your life, your family and friends would most likely wanted you on that list. You were on the edge, in a stupor of alcohol, DIU, and had access to firearms with thoughts of killing yourself. It wasn't a permanent situation, nor should you be on that list permanently.

edited for spelling.

Like I said, I don't have confidence in getting off the list, and then there are those agencies that would keep copies of the old lists and refer back to them. Of course they're not supposed to, but we already know that there are lists of gun owners in various states that are supposed to have been destroyed and they still exist.

And in all that, stupor, stupid, etc, I never harmed or even threatened anyone with one of my guns, so if those people had put me on the list, they would have been wrong.

seamusTX wrote:

tvone wrote:Should there be a database for licensed physicians (Psychologists) to report patients that are a danger to themselves and others that can be included in a NICS check?

IMHO, no.

In the first place, I think the standard would be too subjective. Many people in the medical field are extremely anti-RKBA and would report too many patients. It would essentially make people guilty until proven innocent, and I don't know how someone can get off the NICS restricted list.

In the second place, any time a physician or psychologist can report patients to the legal system, it makes patients hold back information or refuse to seek treatment. That's why medical personnel do not report illegal drug use.

As you say, even if people who are mentally ill are denied firearms through the NICS, they can obtain them by other means. They can use weapons other than firearms. It's easy to find instructions for making bombs on the Internet. It's even easier to crash a vehicle into a crowd, and crazy people occasionally do that.

We always have to balance the rights of the many law-abiding people against the few extreme criminals or mentally ill people.

- Jim

There's a point I forgot, thank you, I fired my old family doctor because she tried to lecture me about the evils of gun ownership, and I'm sure that she would have put me on a list if given a chance.

tvone wrote:Should there be a database for licensed physicians (Psychologists) to report patients that are a danger to themselves and others that can be included in a NICS check?

Nope, the "danger to themselves and/or others" definition is just way too hazy and subjective. What one sees as destructive may be seen by another as reactive, and by another as merely a societal norm.

When my first wife became ill I dropped into a depression that would easily have put me on the list. I did a lot of self-destructive things, more than I care.

Up until that time I would have been considered just an average upstanding member of the community, a volunteer fireman for 17 years (and some of those guys ARE nuts) a Special Olympics volunteer, a Red Cross volunteer, an NRA instructor, and more, but during that time you could have found any number of people who would swear that I was right off my rocker and ready to do mayhem.

I got better, with the help of my friends and most particularly my high school sweetheart, who is now my wife, but I don't think I would have ever gotten off the list, heck, fourteen years later I still have a couple of my late wife's unpaid (due to her deceased condition) accounts on MY credit report despite my attempts to remove them.

When I was at TSA a co-worker "disappeared" from work one day, and then we found out that he supposedly had an unrevealed arrest record - he was on a list. Unfortunately it was a case of mistaken identity, but he never got his job back, and I'll bet he's still on Homeland Security's list.

No, a list like that is just too dangerous.