Monday, October 08, 2007

Sorry, no rights today; computer's down.

To those who would argue that a right inconvenienced is still a right, I link the following;

Gun sales resume as TBI check system operational

After almost three days of being down, the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation’s system for conducting criminal background checks on potential gun buyers is back up and running this afternoon.

Kristen Helm, a TBI spokeswoman, said a software issue “crashed the server” at about 1 a.m. Monday morning, halting all gun sales in Tennessee for almost three days.


Whenever people talk about the right to keep and bear arms, there is usually an argument that if people eventually get their guns, there's no real obstruction of rights. Therefore, "cooling down" periods, the time it takes to run a background check (10 days in some states), or time limits on handgun purchases (1 per 30 days in California), don't interfere with your right to keep and bear arms.

How does that argument stack up against technical difficulties? As a member of the IT industry I've seen crashes so bad they've taken weeks to recover from. I can only imagine that government facilities, without a monetary incentive to bounce back, would suffer longer delays.

So the question is;
If no one could buy a gun for a day do they still have the right to keep and bear arms?
If so, or if not, why? What if it was three days? A week? A month? A year? At what point do we say that being denied the right to buy a gun (which most gun-restricting states still do not dispute) is being denied a constitutional right?


As a side note; if a woman in California is threatened by her ex-boyfriend, buys a small handgun, (and survives the waiting period) and fires a warning shot when her EX kicks down her door, the police will take her gun as evidence for the investigation, and she won't be able to buy another handgun until 30 days after her first purchase, while her EX remains at large.

Hat tip to David

No comments: