For either a ballot or a firearm, requiring photo ID makes it more difficult to obtain. To me, under the practical constraints that currently exist, this is unacceptable for the former but not for the latter. There are a number of reasons:
Thank you for at least trying to explain your double standard.
false premise. Both are fundamental rughts protected by the Constitution.
In that, they are equal; there is no sound argument that one demands greater protection than the other.
Incorect. Both have the same puurpse - to verify that the individual is who we says he is.
One could easily argue that this is -far- more necessary in regards to the right to vote than the right to arms as the right to vote inherently necessitates that you are who you claim to be, whereas the right to own a gun does not.
Your "dangerous voter" argument holds no water -- the "danger" in allwoing people to vote w/o an ID is that a fundamental tenet of the right to vote - that you are who you say you are when you cast a ballot- is not secured. This injures everyone and gravely diminishes the right.
"Voting is more fundamental to our democracy than is shooting" was not a premise- it was a claim that I then supported. You seem to disagree, so let's expand on it:
- Far from a right plainly guaranteed by the Constitution, the individual right to own a handgun was not recognized (and indeed was derided by a conservative chief justice as "one of the greatest pieces of fraud"
Washingtonpost.com:) for hundreds of years. It was not until a few years ago that a bare majority held that there was even a limited right in this respect (
District of Columbia v. Heller - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia)
- Even under Heller, enormous restrictions still exist on gun ownership. The government can still ban bearing a gun in public and can ban certain models of gun. Further, requiring licensing, training, and denying guns to certain people not convicted of crimes (eg, the mentally ill) are all still permitted. These latter requirements would be plainly unconstitutional if applied to ballots.
- Even if we believed that constitutional jurisprudence treated gun ownership and voting the same, they still wouldn't be equally fundamental to our democracy, in that they don't protect other rights in the same way. The ballot serves as a good guarantor of, eg, the right to free speech, since one can vote against an official that denies it. In contrast, as I asserted earlier, gun ownership simply is not terribly effective in this respect.
Now, you say that the purpose of ID is to "verify that the individual is who we says he is". I agree that that, pronoun choice aside, is by definition "identification". However, identification is a means, not an end. We don't go around identifying people for its own sake. Indeed, forcing someone to identify themselves is a (minor) invasion of their privacy, and is to be avoided.
You also say that the
right to vote inherently necessitates that you are who you claim to be, whereas the right to own a gun does not.
I'm not sure how you conclude this. It seems to me much the opposite. By modern sensibilities, voting is done by
secret ballot because we hold that this is the best way for voters to be free from intimidation and bribery. Then, it seems fundamental that the voter identifies him or herself to the least extent possible, not the greatest. (Of course, in other settings, such as Congress, public votes are necessary to hold those voter accountable). In contrast, the licensing of firearms seems to admit the necessity that a gun owner is who he or she claims to be.
You also say "This [voter impersonation] injures everyone and gravely diminishes the right." Can you expand on that? How does it injure people? To what degree? Can you quantify it, or identify a flaw in my own quantification?
