apvonkanel wrote:thatguyoverthere wrote:But I guess all of us here knew that.
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2017/01 ... d-law.html
The Supreme Court on Monday rejected an appeal from Texas in its effort to restore its strict voter identification law...
The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled last year by a 9-6 vote that Texas had violated the federal Voting Rights Act based on testimony that Hispanics were twice as likely and blacks three times more likely than whites to lack an acceptable ID under the law. Lower-income Texas residents also were more likely to lack necessary documents to obtain a free state voting ID, according to experts who supported the challenge...
So even requiring someone to have an ID to exercise their 15th Amendment rights is an infringement of that right. But REQUIRING an ID
and having to obtain government permission to obtain a firearm
and having to receive (and
pay) for government mandated training to carry that firearm
and being told by the government where you can and cannot carry that firearm apparently is NOT an infringement of the 2nd Amendment.
Amazing how so many people don't see a problem with that at all.
My question is which side are you upset about? Do you want to require ID for voting, or not require ID to keep and bear arms. (Note, there is a difference between purchasing and owning).
Ok, that's a fair question. So here's my answer: Yes.
Yes, I want to require ID for voting, and Yes, I do NOT want to require ID to keep and bear arms. ... in a perfect world.
I'm obviously no legal scholar, but from the few articles I've read, I find that our courts -for many years and over many different cases - have determined that many (or most?) of our Constitutional rights apply to anyone in this country, whether they are a citizen or not, and even whether they are here legally or not.
But, again from what I've read, at least two of those rights have been held to NOT apply to non-citizens: the right to vote, and the right to keep and bear arms.
My way of thinking right now (and that's always subject to change
) is that I do not have a problem requiring someone to show some kind of proof that they are a citizen to enjoy those two rights in this country. Of course, the nature of those two acts are different, so that may (or may not) require some differences in implementation of showing that required proof of citizenship.
For voting, I think it's pretty simple, especially since we do that fairly infrequently, and it's a "one and done" kind of thing. When you go to vote, you show some kind of ID that shows you are a US citizen. I simply cannot see how that is too cumbersome a requirement for anyone.
For keeping and bearing firearms, it would be a little more difficult because, unlike voting, you could possibly keep and bear your firearm every single day. Obviously you couldn't (or shouldn't have to) prove to someone every single day that you are a US citizen. So then you have to determine at what point(s) in the process or act of keeping and bearing arms should we require proof of citizenship. Obviously, there are many different times and methods of doing that.
Personally, I'm pretty much ok with the way we do it now - if we buy from a dealer, we fill out a form to tell the government we have a right to buy a gun. The government confirms (in a timely manner) the information that we supplied, and we're done. If we buy a gun from anyone else, that is a PRIVATE business transaction that does not need government approval. In the private transaction, ideally the seller should know that it is illegal for him to sell to a person who is prohibited from owning a firearm. How the seller makes that determination of whether the buyer can legally buy is up to the seller, not the government.
What I'm mostly NOT ok with right now is the requirement that once we legally obtain a firearm, that we then have to obtain a different government permission to bear that firearm outside our home. If we've proven that we have the right to keep a firearm by showing that we are a citizen and are not a criminal, then I believe we simultaneously have the right, as clearly stated in the Constitution, to "bear" that firearm, without having to prove anything else or obtain any other special government approval to do so.
Just my opinion. YMMV.
Or a lot of other things. 
