A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

I'm pretty sure I've quoted the amendment before. And in responding to my brother, I want to focus on the phrase "being necessary to the security of a free State". There are two important words here. The first is "Security" the second is "free". The obvious interpretation of this is that the citizens of the State are expected to defend the state from outside enemies. Taking this to an extreme level, it would not be unreasonable believe that this amendment justifies mandatory military service for citizens. A country in which every citizen is expected to be a soldier and vice versa is a country that is going to have a high level of security form external enemies. But the word "free" adds another meaning. The citizens of the State need to be able to keep that State free. Which means defending from internal enemies, including the standing military.

Unfortunately, this means that if every gun is registred and tracked accounted for, at all times, with "completely traceable ballistics, and in-depth training and certification required on a national level for every firearm sold." and "...in-depth background checks and psychological evaluations performed prior to every purchase of every firearm." Then, it makes it very easy for corrupt government to round up and neutralize those weapons. And by "corrupt government" I don't refer to a national-level failure of democracy. It can be as simple as a few police officers who are crooked. A city council who decides that guns are too dangerous to be allowed in their city.

Yes, gun ownership should require training, and thorough identification. But limiting quantities, and even types of weapons is questionable. Anyone should be able to apply for an FOID, take the appropriate training and be certified as a gun owner. It should also be illegal to transfer or sell a weapon without using a certified gun distributor who is trained in the process of establishing identity. But, the burden of record keeping should fall upon them, not the state. A court order would be required to supeona those record. This at least adds a layer of difficulty to obtaining the tracking.

The process as I envision it is that the manufacturer produces a gun. Before it leaves the factory, it is fired and a ballistics pattern record is made that is matched to the serial number. They then record what distributor the gun was sold to. The manufacturer is required to retain this record for 25 years. The distributor recieves the gun. Upon sale of the gun, they are required to record the serial number of the gun, as well as the serial number of the FOID of the purchaser. The dealer has no access to the ballistics information. The purchaser of the gun would be required to show an FOID, which can be obtained only after a thourough training course, which requires regular renewal. However, a very specific warrant would be required for law enforcement to view any of these records.

Finding the compromise between keeping the guns out of the hands of people who intend to commit crimes with them and bringing them to justice if they do commit those crimes, and protecting the identity of law-abiding gun owners is a very narrow tight rope.

So, my brother occasionally makes noises about what a freakin' awesome president he'd be. He's wrong, of course. But since I enjoy arguing with people, I'm picking a fight with him right now.

What my brother, and from my point of view the major political parties but especially the Democrats, seem to forget is that, in this country, the people have the final say. All of them. Not just the intellectual elite who live in New York and LA. Not just the ones with money. Not just the ones who agree with what you say. Especially not just them. So, if he wants to earn my vote, he's going to have to convince me that even if we disagree on something, he's at least seeing my side of the issue.

So, I'm proposing a series of debates. I'll post a topic, he'll give his opinion, I'll rebut, he'll respond, I'll respond back. Then I'll let him pick the next topic. We'll see how long it lasts. The first topic is Gun Control. You've got till Tuesday.

A quote from "The Audacity of Hope" by Barak Obama

I'd begun to see how any challenge to convention harbored within it the possibility of its own excesses and its own orthodoxy.... In this slow, fitful process of sorting out what I believed, I began silently registering the point in dorm-room conversation when my college friends and I stopped thinking and slipped into cant: the point at which the denunciations of capitalism or American imperialism cam too easily, and the freedom from the constraints of monogamy or religion was proclaimed without fully understanding the value of such constraints, and the role of victim was too readily embrace as a means of shedding responsibility, or asserting entitlement, or claiming moral superiority over those not so victimized.

I know too many people who repeat what they've heard without adding any knowledge of their own. What's worse, is that their sources are limited to a single stream, so there is little chance of a new idea developing. I'm sure I'm guilty of it myself from time to time. Too often now, a statement is critiqued not so much for content, as it is for who has created it. A singer who agrees with you is now considered a better source of information than a scholar who does not.