Toy Control

Jesse Walker | January 3, 2003

The City of New York is considering a bill to ban all toy guns. Couldn't they just mandate safety locks?

Comments

ombnibus bill|1.3.03 @ 4:13AM|#

One wonders what type of brain liberal statists like Bloomberg and Banzhaf suffer from. On the one hand, they have elevated buggery, abortion and obscenity to nearly sacramental status. On the other hand, tasty food, cigarettes, booze, fast cars, trenchant books, and political debate -- nearly everything that is good in life and enjoyed by normal folks -- is subject to being outlawed, pilloried, or sued out of existence. God save us from the people who are out to save us...

Mark S.|1.3.03 @ 4:23AM|#

Forgive me for my naivet�; however, I don't think for an instant that just because an action isn't enumerated in the Bill of Rights doesn't mean that it isn't a right that deserves protection. It would be nice if the founders had thought of everything when the constitution was drafted; unfortunately they didn't. Regardless of that, I can't see why my freedom, or the freedom of anyone else, depends solely on whether or not it's printed out on a yellow piece of paper that sits in a glass case in the National Archives to be gawked at by brainless tourists, sneered at by power-hungry politicians, and "interpreted" by clueless Supreme Court justices.

There has to be some other guarantee!

Pretnar|1.3.03 @ 5:50AM|#

Mark S: I think what you're trying to say is. . .

Amendment IX

The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.

. . . yes?

Mark S.|1.3.03 @ 8:33AM|#

That's a start, Pretnar. However, the strength of the Bill of Rights lies soly on whether or not the Government actually follows it. Sadly it has a very poor track record.

I think that the founders made the mistake of writing the Constitution first and adding the Bill of Rights as a compromised afterthought. If freedom was their goal (and if we examine the beliefs of the Federalists, it wasn't) they should went the other way around: Starting with the things that the state CAN'T do and build up the government around it.

Talk about 200-year-old Monday Morning Quarterbacking, hmmm?

|1.3.03 @ 8:37AM|#

There is no constitutional right to "buggery." (Well, not for the homos at any rate.) See Bowers v. Hardwick (Read the dissent for a heartbreaking --if not always consistant-- paean to liberty)

While I am pro-choice, I am also a believer in Federalism. (And not the watered down Rhenquist court version of the doctrine.) Bottom line: Abortion should not be prohibited or protected by the Feds. And the B.O.R.-2nd Am. does provide an individual right to "the people."

Mark S.|1.3.03 @ 9:57AM|#

GAH... I always did suck at proofreading: Here's the corrected version:

That's a start, Pretnar. However, the strength of the Bill of Rights lies solely on whether or not the Government actually follows it. Sadly it has a very poor track record.

I think that the founders made the mistake of writing the Constitution first and adding the Bill of Rights as a compromised afterthought. If freedom was their goal (and if we examine the beliefs of the Federalists, it wasn't) they should went the other way around: Starting with the things that the state CAN'T do and build up the government around it.

Talk about 200-year-old Monday Morning Quarterbacking, hmmm?

|1.3.03 @ 11:10AM|#

I've got a better idea. Those do-gooders" who don't want there kids to have guns shouldn't buy them and should give the rest of us the same right to choose-oh...wait....the right to choose only applies to women and their reproductive choices. Sorry I forgot.

Cph|1.3.03 @ 12:34PM|#

Kids with toy guns in NYC tend to get shot dead by the police. One would think that this reality would be more persuasive than any law or public service announcement against the toys, but apparently not: it just happened again this week.

Mark S.|1.3.03 @ 12:35PM|#

Steve, what does a ridiculas toy gun ban have anything to do with abortion? If you're trying to show that liberals who oppose gun ownership and support abortion rights are hypocrites, then you have a point. However, let me point out they are no more contridictory than those on the right who support the second amendment (at least, for now) and want to ban abortion.

Mark S.|1.3.03 @ 12:39PM|#

Whoops... that should be "ridiculous" and "contradictory." Either these web-logs need spell checkers, or I need a dictionary. :-)

|1.3.03 @ 12:58PM|#

Mark, I hate to be the one to point this out to you, but there is one teeny leetle detail differentiating the abortion argument from that of gun ownership. It's called a Constitutional Amendment. Perhaps you've heard of it? Heh.

Personal ownership of a firearm is both Constitutionally and historically valid. Abortion "rights" enjoy neither status, and the reasoning used to justify this right is at least suspect.

Please do not label me as some anti-abortion nut, as I am not. But I do want to clarify the differences.

Personally, I what I find ironic is that many "liberals" generally favor sex education and oppose gun safety education, while many "conservatives" favor precisely the opposite.

|1.4.03 @ 9:50AM|#

Mark S: "Starting with the things that the state CAN'T do and build up the government around it."
No good. Then everything the founders hadn't thought of would be fair game for powermad idiots in government. For the Federal government, they enumerated what it _could_ do, and everything else was out of bounds. That's the only thing that will really limit government - if you can stick to it.

The problem is, the Supreme Court never entirely enforced the limitation of powers; for instance, the Alien and Sedition Acts and the federal actions agagainst Mormom polygamy should have been ruled unconstitutional even without the 1s Amendment, since nothing in the constitution gives the feds that power. Then in the 1930's the interstate commerce clause was stretched to cover almost anything...

The other problem is that no such limitation was put on state government - most of their constitutions did (and do) have a short list of things the government couldn't do, and anything not mentioned was presumably within the state's power. So the feds couldn't trample on your rights, but the state government just had to think up a new way, not specifically forbidden to them. And nowadays, Congress can think up a new rights violation and bribe the states to enact it, by offering back a small part of the money they extracted from that state's residents in taxes...

|1.4.03 @ 11:10AM|#

Seems to me the Bill of Rights basically states what the government is (or is not) allowed to do (ie, "Congress shall make no Law", etc.). Or is it just me?

Vikar|1.6.03 @ 10:09AM|#

Despite the fact toy guns are made in bright colors indicating that they are toys, the bubble wrap parents (the same ones that cry about second hand smoke for them and their children in bars) are whining about toy guns. We are not holding real guns to the heads of parents that don't like toy guns to buy them for their kids.

A contributer to my site has written Mayor Bloomberg about this idiocy and Paintball guns. Those guns are neither toys nor guns. ( http://www.vikarsrant.net/Painball.htm )

When are adults going to stop paying for the idiocy of irresponsible parenting?

|8.9.03 @ 6:58AM|#

I suggest you guys re-read what has been written, and you will see how rediculous some of your comments have been, particularly Steve. Who made absolutely no sense. Darn those good doers! Why do you care if my child plays with a toy gun and gets shot, duh! Sounds like you dont much care either!