guns and cars

The meme “why not regulate guns like cars?” was much blogged last week. Anthony Swenson wrote:

The real reason we should dislike the driver’s license model: Driving is not in the Bill of Rights. The right to keep and bear arms is.

I wrote to him:

Are you sure that driving is not in there?

Freedom to travel is as fundamental as self-defense; it’s near the top of the Articles of Confederation (“the people of each state shall have free ingress and regress to and from any other state”, Art.IV); and therefore is covered in the Ninth Amendment if anything is. Just as the RKBA does not go away with new technology, neither does a 9A right to exercise the normal means of travel.

In my humble opinion.

Swen wrote back:

I guess my short response would be: Fine, you defend your vision of rights and I’ll defend mine. The long answer would have something to do with the ‘Commerce Clause’. But this is thought provoking.. would you mind if I blog this?

Better yet, set up a blog – it is an awful lot of fun..

So I did.

Later: See also.