Possession vs. Ownership by a felon; how fine is the line?

Matt, you hit the nail on the head.

Wayne, don't get too touchy about this, but Matt is right. When a 'felony' was truly a serious (read 'violent') crime, then perhaps this prohibition made a lot of sense (to be honest, I'm not well read on the history of this provision).

But now, we've got lots of felonies on the books ... many of them non-violent.

While the political climate makes it currently impractical to pursue the issue, doesn't the proliferation, and in essense the 're-definition' of felonies change your black and white perspective on this matter?
 
Just to use a little imagination.

Say that laws are passed prohibiting convicted felons from possessing firearms. Now, say that laws are passed making every other act under the sun that an individual can perform a felony, whether those acts involve violating the rights of another person or not. (I once new an old man, whoops, a convicted felon, who was serving time because he dared to defy the US government by failing to obtain USDA permission before selling his own farm raised catfish to willing buyers across state lines).

Now, say that, in order to prevent these ruffians from obtaining firearms with which they will surely slaughter us all and not 'save the children,' the law imposes waiting periods on the purchase of firearms so that background checks can be done. A reasonable restriction to prevent felons from bying guns to kill the children with, right? Now, we all know that a background check is nothing more than a records check. Hardly effective for screening out the hardcore, manipulative felons that we are concerned with in the first place. So, instead of background checks, it is 'only reasonable that we require background investigations. Six weeks is a reasonable amount of time to perform a thorough background investigation.

Of course, now that investigations are required, someone must do them and someone must pay for them. Well, its not fair that non gunowners be required to subsidize gunowners. So, we must license legal gunowners. This will help to streamline administrative costs while placing the cost burden on only those who 'benefit' from them.

Thirty years later, between the ever expanding legal restrictions and the ever increasing investigative/administrative costs, the Second Ammendment is essentially a moot issue becuase a sizeable portion of the population are ex-felons and few others can afford to own guns, legally that is; no one except the government and a handful of bold thugs who by then are working closely with the police, performing services for the police, doing things for them that it is still illegal for the police to do, in exchange for the freedom to persue their criminal activities.

This is how 'justice' operates in other countries. Do we really want to be like them?
 
Lawdog,

You do your crime, and you do your time. You want them to not have a gun, keep their sorry *ss prison or on parole for ever. So yes, prohibition and enforcement of that prohibition is UnConstitutional in my opinion.
 
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