this post was submitted on 14 Feb 2025
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I am, indeed, biased. Heavily biased. But, my argument is consistent, even if we're talking about a hypothetical 72-hour waiting period before buying a hammer, or exercising our 5th amendment rights. What the heck do you need a hammer for that can't wait 72 hours? Why do you need to be arraigned within 48 hours? Why can't you just remain locked up for two weeks?
I (mostly) suppressed my bias in my argument. I accepted the premise of a cooling-off period that I do not actually believe to be necessary or appropriate.
My arguments reflect the concept of strict scrutiny. I demonstrate that even if we accept the (unfounded) premise of a "cooling off" period, this law is not the "least restrictive means" of achieving that purpose.
If you want to keep this law, you're going to have to consider someone walking into a gun store with a Remington 870 over their shoulder, an AR15 on their chest, and a Glock 17 on their hip. You're going to have to explain how society benefits by requiring this well-armed individual to wait 72 hours before picking up a bolt-action .22 plinker.
If you can make a reasonable argument for this, you have a solid case to keep the law.
Frankly I would have it go further, require a full background check to be recently completed, expand it it to a week, cap ammo volumes, enable red flag provisions, and entirely ban full classes of high capacity and high cyclic rate weapons.
Your comparison to a simple tool or invoking of a self preservation is absurd on its face to the point of not being worth proper answering. I've handled guns virtually all my life, took a state safety course at a around 10 years old that's marked on my licence 30+ years later, and take a fair pride in picking off a dime size target at back yard range lengths.
Introducing a minimal delay on the flow of weapons into the already saturated hands of the public is a pittance of a concession if it stops even a single person from go out after a drunken fight and decide to shoot someone, or an isolated depressed individual to say this is the night to die, or to keep another of the far too frequent school shootings from happening. You provide this picture of a walking arsenal coming in and needing to get yet another gun right this moment as though they where an addict needing a fix as some argument against the law.
This premise is the proposed "compelling state interest" I discussed in my last comment.
This law isn't going to die from lack of a "compelling state interest". This law is going to die from a lack of "narrowly tailored", because nobody has made that argument.
The complaint you present is that there should be several exceptions to the waiting period. If you believe that phrasing it as cooling off is a problem then the simple solution is to say all purchases of a firearm have a waiting period, no exceptions. Crisis of specificity resolved.
Of course the go to argument then is 'but my 2A' at which point you end up down some rabbit hole where people argue they should be able to own a fully automatic field gun if they want to because reasons...
Yeah, I've addressed this. The "interest" that I accepted as "compelling" only applies to first time gun buyers, who don't have access to other guns during the waiting period.
To meet strict scrutiny, you need to demonstrate both the compelling government interest and the narrow tailoring. If you want me to accept that "no exceptions" is narrowly tailored, you're going to have to show me a compelling government interest that applies to both current gun owners and first time buyers.
Your arguments don't seem to demonstrate comprehension of "strict scrutiny". That is almost certainly going to be applied to this law. If you want to keep this law, your arguments are going to need to meet the strict scrutiny standard.