With apologies to Hube: dopey WNJ comments of the week

(Well, Hube, at least I'm pulling out Facebook comments and not poaching on your preserve in the Letters.)

You will all remember the case this week of the photo of the young man posing with the .22LR squirrel rifle that his Dad got him for his birthday with resulted in Family Services and the local police attempting to search his house.  The story itself is a travesty since neither the father nor the boy had done anything remotely illegal (and check out the picture for how careful the son is being not to have his finger inside the trigger guard when the photo was taken).

But the incident is chiefly important for revealing in the Comments Section--within Delaware--the fact that many backers of "common sense gun laws" really do have the elimination of 2nd Amendment rights and eventual outright confiscation of all privately held firearms as their objective:

Let's run that by again:

Elliot Jacobson says,

This instance is not a case of a father bonding with his son through hunting but rather a father indoctrinating his son to believe as he does, that he has a citizen's right to bear arms ... .  This debate over the ownership and use of weapons is a dangerous one ... .  And as Chief Justice Burger once said the 2nd amendment argument defending each individuals right to bear arms is fraudulent.

Debbie Ganassi says,

Should have put that boy is [in] foster care. 

Idiots.

The sad part here (aside from the obvious failure on the part of our two commenters to even grasp how the US Constitution and laws of this country work) is that Mr. Jacobson is actually right about the US Department of Justice's position on the 2nd Amendment, as evidenced by the Supreme Court arguments presented in US v Emerson (2000):

Judge Garwood: "You are saying that the Second Amendment is consistent with a position that you can take guns away from the public? You can restrict ownership of rifles, pistols and shotguns from all people? Is that the position of the United States?"
Meteja (attorney for the government): "Yes"
Garwood: "Is it the position of the United States that persons who are not in the National Guard are afforded no protections under the Second Amendment?"
Meteja: "Exactly."
Meteja then said that even membership in the National Guard isn't enough to protect the private ownership of a firearm. It wouldn't protect the guns owned at the home of someone in the National Guard.
Garwood: "Membership in the National Guard isn't enough? What else is needed?"
Meteja: "The weapon in question must be used IN the National Guard." 

The reality is that there ARE a significant number of people in Delaware who view HB 35 and all its cousins as necessary precursors to universal gun registration and, ultimately, confiscation.

Nor is arguing that this is the case unmerited paranoia, since there is a perfect case study in California of this already happening on a large scale. 

And it is germane to revisit the quotation from that story about what has made it all possible:

As many as 200,000 people nationwide may no longer be qualified to own firearms, according to Garen Wintemute, director of the Violence Prevention Research Program at theUniversity of California, Davis. Other states may lack confiscation programs because they don’t track purchases as closely as California, which requires most weapons sales go through a licensed dealer and be reported.
“Very, very few states have an archive of firearm owners like we have,” said Wintemute, who helped set up the program.

Yes, Elliott Jacobsen, Debbie Ganassi, and a lot of the folks in Delaware supporting this legislation DO NOT believe in a citizen's right to bear arms, DO NOT believe in due process or a government of laws, and ARE being given cover by those folks who are piously maintaining that they would NEVER support universal gun registration or confiscation.