Now, as gun-control supporters increasingly set their sights on gun owners, gun-rights supporters must marshal that same passion to combat the more complex anti-gun campaign to expand prohibited-persons categories. [More]
What, like the kind that could be caught up in NRA-endorsed "Project Exile"?
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Give a government, any government, a power and they will find a way, not only to abuse it, but to rationalize the abuse and an answer to a pressing need.
The Founders, at least some of them, were well aware of this property, and insisted on a Bill of Rights to keep the tendency in check. But as one of them said in Federalist 51:
"It may be a reflection on human nature, that such devices should be necessary to control the abuses of government. But what is government itself, but the greatest of all reflections on human nature? If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself."
In short, we've more or less achieved the first aim, enabling government to control the governed, but failed miserably at the second, as government shows no inclination to control itself.
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