Daniel D. Polsby Quote

"[A] public policy of simply discouraging people from owning or using firearms is not, in and of itself, a constitutionally permissible objective, any more than discouraging people from religious observance would be permissible to some oh-so-progressive government that considered religion as hopelessly declassé as progressives nowadays consider the right to keep and bear arms .... And any statute or regulation that burdens the right to keep and bear arms on the ground that guns are a public health hazard should enjoy the same frosty reception in court that would be given a statute or regulation that burdened the free exercise of religion as a mental hazard."

by:	Daniel D. Polsby (1945-) Dean of the Law School and Professor of Law at George Mason University
Source:	Treating the Second Amendment Like Normal Constitutional Law, REASON, March 1996, at 36.
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Categories:	Arms, Constitution, Health, Prohibition, Statism
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This addresses an aspect of social engineering in which the the government of a free people has no business.  -- J Carlton, Calgary      1
Carlton hit it on the head. Such social engineering is a depravity of a malignant despotism.  -- Mike, Norwalk      1
The liberals running our government have no business doing about 99% of the things they do, but they do them anyway.  -- jim k, Austin, Tx      1
The relationship between the people and their representative government is NOT based upon trust, it is based upon LAW. If the people cannot be trusted with arms, how can the government of the same people be trusted with the exclusive monopoly? The government is supposed to provide the people with a means to justice, not to force us into subservience. As a rule, Power should not be concentrated in a collective, it is by nature distributed to each individual. The government's attitude is that power is dangerous and thus should be reserved for government authorities -- therefore, they spend most of their efforts seizing more and more power from the people. This is NOT the American principle, actually it is the exact opposite.  -- E Archer, NYC      2
Very well said...  -- B.Knucklehead, DSM
The BJS data shows that gun-related homicides declined by 39 percent from 1993 to 2011, and the Pew Research Center found that gun-related homicides fell from 7 per 100,000 in 1993 to 3.6 per 100,000 in 2010, a decline of 49 percent, Gottlieb said. The declining percentages go in the same direction. Firearms-related homicides have plummeted dramatically while more Americans bought more guns, including millions of semi-automatic modern sporting rifles. More people are licensed to carry in more states, and crime is down. It is time for the gun control crowd to acknowledge they have been consistently and undeniably wrong, Gottlieb concluded, and admit that their agenda has never been about crime, but about public disarmament. They don't want to prevent gun crime, they want to prevent gun ownership. Alan Gottlieb - CCKRB - May 8/13  -- J Carlton, Calgary      1
Should read: Alan Gottlieb - CCRKBA - May 8/13 Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms  -- J Carlton, Calgary
-- Ronw13, ID

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