--(Ammoland.com)- Comparing guns to cars is a common and seductive but subtle error of logic.
If it makes sense to license drivers and register cars, then it would make sense to license pilots and register airplanes. And we do. That’s parallel logic.
However, if it makes sense to license gun owners and register guns, then it would make sense to license writers and register printing presses. That would be parallel logic too. But we don’t do that, because that doesn’t make sense.
That’s because those are rights, and government has no legitimate power to license your rights.
So, why would an honest writer object to having a license? Most reporters I know can’t answer that question, which explains why so many support “universal registration” — they understand the issue very poorly. I’ll answer it for you.
If you must pass a government test, pay a tax called a “fee,” get fingerprinted, photographed, listed in the criminal database and carry around your card with an expiration date to publish an article, or else go to prison, that’s flat out wrong. Licensing and registering freedom is tyrannical, assaults the innocent and serves no legitimate purpose in America. That’s why.
There’s also the small point that writing down your name, or my name, in an FBI file somewhere, when we buy a firearm (or write an essay) lacks a crime-fighting component, and in fact focuses in the opposite direction.
I wish I had a Mexican Peso for every time one of the gun-rights folks used the car comparison to try and make their biased and silly points. I'd be able to buy me a nice hacienda south of the border where the living is easy.
But now that the argument has been successfully turned against them, concerning registration and licensing, they've come up with this. Licensing gun owners and registering guns the way we do car owners and cars only makes sense if we also license writers.
Does that make sense to you? Isn't that the same thing as bringing the 1st Amendment into the discussion about limiting the 2nd? We're not talking about writers and we're not talking about the 1st Amendment.
In other words, in order to claim that one comparison is wrong they introduce another. Why can't these people just say what they mean?
What's your opinion? Please leave a comment.