what’s the difference? The Second Amendment....
Typical Leftist: “Why do you need a right to bear arms????
Thomas Jefferson: “The beauty of the Second Amendment is that it won’t ever be NEEDED unless they try to take it”
Unfortunately functionally the Second Amendment is not a "right" anymore but a "privilege" in actual real world & legal practice.
And pretty much most of the "good" folks and gun owners have fallen into line and won't rock the boat or fight back or even support their fellows.
People can argue semantics, and it varies from state to state, but ask yourself this....
Let's say you get arrested in one of these communist states for having a piece of plastic that holds more metal tubes than they want, or the federal government decides your metal tube was 1/4th an inch too short for their liking and they decide to make you one of these "felon" things or you didn't agree with what the FBI ordered you to say in your witness statement, or you threw your keys "angrily" on the counter, or you sold some Disneyland tickets that you couldn't use as your family trip got cancelled and now you are suddenly this "felon" thing.
Assuming all the standard legal BS is done and you are back on with living your life:
Do you still have the right to free speech... yes you absolutely have that right
Do you still have your civil rights against search / seizure etc... yes absolutely
Do pretty much every one of the rights in the bill of rights still apply to you... yes except one.....
Many states now are even giving you back the right to vote... yep right there..
BUT.....
For some reason for the rest of your life you now have lost your second amendment rights....
I don't see anywhere in the constitution that it says all the rights here are immutable and permanent and natural except the 2nd amendment?
And it's not even being convicted of those 'felonies', you can loose your rights almost permanently for a whole host of things or be blocked from excising them for unproven, unsubstantiated allegations.
Even in most "free" states, exercising your 2nd amendment rights still requires you to get "permission" from the government in the vast majority of cases and in the non free states, you have to get permission before you can.
You often have to pay a tax to exercise your 2nd amendment rights or you will get arrested and possibly loose them for the rest of your life...
Do you have to get government permission before any of the other rights like those in the 1st amendment?
Any other rights if you don't pay a tax on them do you loose them for the rest of your life?
When states further restrict the 2nd amendment, is there an open public outcry and everyone rallying to fight it tooth and nail till it is defeated like they do if you do anything against the 1st amendment or against the right to be a homosexual?
Right now it operates as a "sure you have a right.... just until we can claim you did something that we added to the list of things that ban you from that right, or we decide to further restrict that right & if you don't follow those restrictions then well... that is an offense that bans you from that right for good".
The "Good" folks are all hoodwinked by a blind devotion to "The Law" that they grumblingly accept the virtual changing of a Right into a Privilege on a daily basis and then still bow down more and more to yet further infringements. They will even argue for the restrictions against others even in broad strokes because well "safety" or whatever.
Eventually they will tighten the noose fully across the country on a federal level to what many states are now, where the "right" is firmly and only a "privilege" for the elite and they will come down on you harsh and hard if you attempt to go ahead and exercise them....
(If you don't believe me, check out what some states will do to you if they find you have an empty bullet case in your pocket when they frisk you after seeing you leave a shooting range with a buddy)....
Now folks may finally reach a breaking point and decide to take back their rights and lots here talk about it..... as more states decide to put the boot to the 2nd amendment and get away with it..... So who knows what will happen, but I think I'm fairly in the facts to be very pessimistic about the fate of the 2nd amendment for the next generation.
If you think that currently the 2nd amendment will save you from government roundups, maybe... but look back to the Boston pressure cooker bombers. The public either stood buy or actively cheered while the storm troopers forcibly searched everyone's houses in half the city which is blatantly unconstitutional and any supposed warrant for such dealings would be illegal under the constitution as "a writ of assistance".
The irony of course was that for all their heavy handed military cosplay tactics they found nothing, and rather only found the bad guy when some citizen out and about in his back yard saw the bad guy and called the police.
Will it go down any different with those that refuse to turn in whatever weapons are made illegal after they first pass registration?
Who knows...