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[QUOTE=Jim in CT;1130732
I'm not someone who thinks the constitution is a living, evolving document. I prefer to think of what they meant, at the time it was crafted. The evidence seems compelling to me (we can disagree obviously), that they felt that certain restrictions in the name of public safety, are well within the intent of the second amendment.[/QUOTE]
The Second Amendment IS "in the name of public safety." It is the public's safety against a tyrannical government. Restricting the public safety in the name of public safety is a contradiction. It's the sort of thing tyrants do as a legal pretense to consolidate power.
There are sometimes exceptions in extreme situations in which a law may be disobeyed. Crossing the street against a red light can be excused if it is done, for instance, to save a child from being mauled by a pit bull on the other side of the street. There is no necessity of creating a law to allow such "illegal" behavior.
The real agent that threatens the public safety in the above instance is not the law against crossing a red light, it is the aggressive pit bull. Nor is it the pit bull in itself that is the problem, rather it is the mismanagement of the pit bull. I have a friend with anger issues. To help him with his problem, he has been issued a well trained dog to accompany him in public. The dog is peaceful, tranquil, well mannered, and calming to the owner. It has been trained to be so. The dog is a pit bull. To ban pit bulls because some owners encourage them to be violent, as can be done with any other breed of dog, is no reason to ban pit bulls. But they are scary because they often are not well trained, or even are ill trained. So there is this notion that they should be banned. If it were the inherent nature of pit bulls to uncontrollably be violent, then it might be logical to ban them.
But if pit bulls were used to secure public or private safety, as in the above example, if they could be used to defend against those who wish to do you harm, then, in the larger interest of public safety, they would be a good thing to have. So long as they are trained to do so. So it would not be in the interest of public safety to ban an instrument which aids that safety because of its occasional misuse. It would be more logical, and overall safer to the public to have well trained dogs rather than banning some because of those aberrant behaviors.
If, in the interest of the greater public safety against abusive government, weapons can be used to that end, and public ownership is protected by a constitution in order to secure that privilege, claiming to ban weapons that strengthen the public safety against government on the grounds that is in the interest of public safety to ban them because of their relatively rare intentionally fatal misuse, is simply a deceitful gateway toward the path of weakening that Constitution and its guaranties.
But the emotional reaction to seeing a child mauled by a pit bull cries for getting rid of pit bulls.
Your emotional reaction calling for limitations to protect public safety against isolated incidents cries for some limit to the overall public safety in the larger political sense. But that is a reasonable reaction because you don't believe in the original reason for the Second Amendment, even though you say you"prefer to think of what they meant, at the time it was crafted."
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