Vermont bill proposed for NON-gun-owners

I don't think charging for CCW permits is Constitutional either.

Does that mean I think we should mandate gun ownership, which is in my opinion the same exact kind of intrusiveness and equally unconstitutional? No, and I think it's absurd this was taken seriously at all.

If a man is arrested without being read his rights, you don't remedy the problem by unlawfully searching the police officers' houses. You remedy it by making sure people are read their rights in the future.

It's a tired old saw, but two wrongs don't make a right.
 
This is a novel idea, but it could be turned against you as well. The Constitution outlines what the government must do and what the people can do. When I read the Constitution, I did not see anything in the first 10 amendments telling me what I must do, only things I have the opportunity to do that the government may not take away. For example, we have freedom of religion as guaranteed by the 1st Amendment. However, if I chose not to attend a church, am I going to get charged a $500 fee by the government? What initially seems to be a good policy may end up going places that we don't want.
 
LawScholar said:
I don't think charging for CCW permits is Constitutional either.
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But it IS constitutional.

Are you really a law student? If so, you need to brush up on the meaning of "regulation." Where courts have ruled on the question, they have generally held that legislatures may "regulate" constitutionally-protected rights, but they cannot outright prohibit them.

How does this work in real life? Ohio is an excellent example. Until about four (?) years ago, Ohio did not allow concealed carry of firearms. Some Ohio resident decided to carry a sidearm openly. He was arrested for doing so. The Ohio Supreme Court ultimately ruled that Ohio's law violated Ohio's constitution, because the state's constitution guaranteed a right to bear arms. Thus (the court reasoned), if the legislature wished to prohibit the concealed carry of firearms, the only way citizens could avail themselves of the RIGHT to carry was to do so openly. Ergo: open carry was legal in Ohio.

This ruling led to a series of open carry days, whereupon the legislature had an epiphany and enacted legislation to make concealed carry permits available. Under such conditions, it is entirely constitutional to charge a fee for the concealed carry permit -- as long as there is available some alternate, no-fee avenue for "the People" to avail themselves of the right in question.
 
Wow, Aguila, please, be more confrontational. Yep, I'm a law student, thanks for passive aggressively accusing me of lying about that, and yep, I understand to a very large extent what regulation means in a number of contexts civil, criminal, and Constitutional

To my own interpretation of the framer's intention in writing the Bill of Rights, I don't believe they intended such regulation. My statement was of my own ideological beliefs, not settled law as the courts have seen fit. Being a law student doesn't mean I have to agree with every decision SCOTUS has ever made. And yeah, again, I "really am."

I understand fully why it's been such regulation has been decided as Constitutional, and I understand that this is the law we work within now. I've read the cases, read the opinions. I disagree with the decision. In addition, I was only agreeing with a previous poster's point to launch into my disagreement with the legislation mentioned by the original poster. The full context of my post, not cherry-picked for a single statement, makes it blatantly clear that the main point of my post was to disagree with registration of non-gun-owners.

I'll bow out of this discussion, I'd hate to dare disagree with the Supreme Court (Dred Scott) and be thought of as ignorant of the law.
 
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Under a burden of strict scrutiny, the cost of a CCW permit can be only the cost of issuing one. The degree of scrutiny in Second Amendment cases has yet to be determined, unless some case has passed me by. Mandatory training is questionable. The Founding Fathers knew this was not necessary to keep and bear arms. The only case histories banning the carry of concealed weapons were aimed at keeping them out of the hands of undesirables, and in the hands of desirable poeple. It's quite possible in view of this it is possible that concealed carry is a constitutionally protected fundaamental right not subject to regulation beyond that which SCOTUS mentioned in Heller, namely nut cases, criminals and in sensitive government buildings*.

* but one can carry in a post office while hunting, unless it gets closed in the downsizing, or you are shot first by a postal service employee...
 
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