I’m not sure precisely what rights the Founders intended to protect with the Second Amendment, but I’m pretty sure they don’t include the right to sell AK-47s to Mexican drug cartels.
"Man is but a reed, the most feeble thing in nature, but he is a thinking reed" – Blaise Pascal
2 responses to “Ah, sweet freedom”
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The right to keep and bear arms supposes you can buy them.
I think that would imply a right to give or sell them to others who have a right to keep and bear them.
Is it generally accepted that a Constitutional right can be forfeited by anyone who had it to begin with, for any reason?
What a scary notion that is, that legislatures could deprive any class of people at their pleasure of a such a right.
Wouldn’t that deprive enshrining the thing in the Constitution of all point?
Isn’t the point of writing a right into the Constitution to deny legislatures the power to deprive anyone of it?
Hence I think state laws denying the franchise to criminals are of doubtful legitimacy in view of the amendments to the federal Constititution guaranteeing it.
And laws denying the right to keep and bear arms to criminals seem, surely, to be in a like case.
And hence laws forbidding sale of same to criminals.
I am not saying I prefer things this way.
I am saying I think that’s where the logic of it goes.
On a related note, efforts by liberals and the UN to stifle gun sales to rebels in Africa or elsewhere in the globe represent an unprincipled attack on the (natural) rights of the people in favor of despotic governments that don’t want to have to face armed citizens.
Nothing could make the political significance of gun rights more clear than the evident political purpose of these efforts.
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Oh, but the government certainly does have the right to regulate foreign trade, and that would include trade in arms.
A Thinking Reed 
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