UK Police To Allow Gun Users To Renew Licenses With iPhone App 271
Sussex police are creating a number of iPhone apps for the public, including one to renew your gun license. Unsurprisingly, the plan has some anti-gun groups upset. Lyn Costello, of Mothers Against Murder and Aggression (MAMAA), said, "This isn't suitable, especially in light of what happened in Cumbria. We've got to be extra careful giving gun licenses. We have this attitude that gun murders don't happen very often so it's OK to be lax, but it is not OK and we've got to do everything in our power to stop it happening again. We can't put money before life and if you start to do that we are losing our humanity. It is a really stupid idea.''
Simple gun control measures (Score:1, Interesting)
You know, in the USA, one of the reasons it's so easy for criminals to get guns is that even if your locality passes a law restricting gun purchases very severely, somebody can always drive to the next state over with the lax gun laws, buy a gazillion guns, then come back and sell them to criminals for inflated prices in a black market.
There are some pretty simple measures that, if implemented at the federal level, would make it significantly harder or more expensive for criminals to get guns:
None of these would prevent law-abiding citizens from owning guns. But guess what? The NRA is rabidly opposed to all of them.
IE-only all over again... (Score:3, Interesting)
For a brief but wonderful window of time, it looked like the Web was going to be the new platform.
Then Apple came along and fucked it up.
Please explain: Why does this need to be an iPhone app? I keep hearing about more and more iPhone apps which would make just as much sense -- more sense, even -- as web apps, and that includes the iTunes store itself. (WTF is the point of making the iTunes store DRM-free if I still need a specific, proprietary client program to purchase stuff with?)
Re:Mothers (Score:3, Interesting)
What a nut. What state did this woman live in?
Here in Arizona, you can pretty much shoot anyone who you reasonably fear is threatening your life, whether they're attacking you with a gun or knife or their bare hands, they want to rape you, they've broken into your home, or are driving towards you (this happened not too long ago, someone stole a guy's car and tried to run him over; instead of getting out of the way, he shot the guy. His first words to the police (as they should be any time you use a gun): "I was in fear for my life".
Re:Ownership is not the issue (Score:2, Interesting)
I was referring to the right to travel. In the same sense, I have the right to travel to Europe this summer, but if I don't have the money to make the trip, I can't exercise that right, can I?
Even assuming arguendo the Second Amendment is an individual right applicable to the states (courts are still murky on this one - don't challenge me on this, you will lose as I will post the case law), the exercise of all Constitutional rights is subject to reasonable limits. Your right to free speech is subject to time and place restrictions, for example. The Fourth Amendment simply does not apply at the U.S. border or the functional equivalent thereof, even to your laptop, for another example.
So it is with the Second Amendment. Insane people do not have the right to keep and bear arms at all, nor do children, nor do felons. The reductio ad absurdum of your argument that the Second Amendment is untrammelled would be to claim that it gives you the right to bear a nuclear device, a howitzer, a tank, a machine gun or a grenade launcher. After all, the government has all of these and if you accept the argument that the purpose of the Second Amendment is to give the people the right of rebellion, then why shouldn't you?