Comments on LGF Overnight Thread On The 2nd Amendment and Right to Vote

The background checks to purchase a firearm should be exactly the same as the background checks to register to vote. No more and no less. The ID check to complete the purchase and take possession of the weapon should be the same as the ID check needed to cast your vote. No more and no less.

re: #1253 Iron Fist

No, voting is a privilege. People under a certain age can't vote. Neither can people with a felony record (in some states). The Supreme Court has taken a very expansive view of the privilege for the last hundred and fifty years or so, so that people think of voting as a right.

But it is not, nor has it ever been a right. Just because Democrats want to allow illegal aliens to vote doesn't mean that they have any right to do so. The first requirement to being allowed to vote is that you are supposed to be an American citizen.

just because they don't enforce the rules on the books doesn't mean that there are no rules on the books.

This is semantics and solipsism. I'm not sticking around to deconstruct the grammar but just remember this. The community creates the legislature. Saying that the voters are defined as being competent citizens, competency being defined as being of an age to be accountable for one's choices and able to exercise reasonable judgement including being sane, does not mean that the state grants you membership in the enfranchised group as a privilege. The group defines its membership and uses the legislature, an organ of the state, to codify the rules and procedures it desires. Who the community defines as eligible to exercise the right to vote may change by definition, for example there may be a property qualification or a bar to public employees or beneficiaries voting, but that does not mean that they are losing a privilege. It merely means that they would not be members of the group able to exercise the right.

Privileges are granted by the State, Rights are inherent in a community and expressed by that community through the organs of a state, the legislature, that the community creates.