DCKilla
Regular Member
Here is some court decisions concerning case law about the right to travel. I just wanted to toss this out here to get your opinions.
http://www.apfn.org/apfn/travel.htm
http://www.apfn.org/apfn/travel.htm
If a person cannot be trusted operating a vehicle, they should be in prison. If they are allowed to roam free, they should be allowed to drive a car on the freeway.
I don't believe that for a second.
I just had two purposes for making that statement: to point out the foolishness of equating a right to drive a car with the RKBA and another argument that it is not my intention to get into here.
The RKBA is an enumerated and protected right. The natural right is not specifically to be armed, but to defend oneself. Our Founders, believing reasonably that being armed was necessary to defending oneself, chose to protect the natural right (self-defense) by protecting the specified enumerated right (RKBA).
The right to travel is a natural right, but is not enumerated in a way that protects a particular mode of exercising that right. As driving a car is only one way, among many, to travel, it can be treated as a privilege without infringing on the natural right to travel. (Were the government license actual travel, i.e. issue licenses for all modes of travel, as some oppressive governments have done, then they would be infringing on the natural right to travel.)
I, for one, support the reasonable regulation of operating motor vehicles by State and local governments.
It is none of the feds' business.
I would also point out the danger in the argument that equates a right to drive with the RKBA: The equation fosters the opposition argument that we regulate the operation of vehicles, a far more dangerous weapon than guns, so why shouldn't we regulate guns. Sauce for the goose.
By way of an example of the "sauce error": When I first joined the AF, men were required to wear a hat when in uniform outdoors. Women were not. In an attempt to get rid of the hat-wearing requirement, it was pointed out that there was no rational basis for this bit of sex discrimination. The folks in the Chief of Staff's office agreed. The rules were changed to require women to wear hats outdoors.
Be careful what you ask for. Those who make our laws might just start treating the carry of firearms and the driving of cars equivalently. Many already do.
Put simply, the two do not equate. The "right of travel" had nothing to do with cars, having been conceived of centuries before the advent of the first automobile. Throughout, however, the right of travel has always been subject to good conduct free of warrant/arrest/conviction/probation.
Except if you read the Chicago Motor coach ruling SCOTUS has ruled that traveling in a vehicle on our roads and highways is a "right".
Does that ruling specify whether you are simply a passanger, or the operator of the vehicle?
As driving a car is only one way, among many, to travel, it can be treated as a privilege without infringing on the natural right to travel.
Does that ruling specify whether you are simply a passanger, or the operator of the vehicle?
But couldnt that same opinion be applied to bearing arms? The same way driving a car is only one way to travel, firearms are only one way to defend yourself. We could walk everywhere we go the same way that we could defend ourselves by flinging paperclips at an attacker. But whether traveling or defending yourself you should have the best, most reasonable means of doing so available to you.
I've been searching the heck outta the Internet for the ruling, preferring to read it over just repeating what another has said about it. All I can find are virtually the same few words about it repeated again and again and again on message boards by posters trying to make the same point.
There is a lot of cutting and pasting going on--and not a heckuva lot of reading going on.
I would be profoundly grateful for an opportunity to actually read this decision should someone be able to post a link.
I have been trying to find it as well.
From what I have found so far, I don't think it was a SCOTUS case, I think it was a Illinois Supreme Court case.
I was able to find a reference to "Volume 169 of the Northeastern Law Reporter, p. 22"
But haven't been able to find a copy online.
A couple of the sites I stumbled on said it was a case where The city of Chicago was trying to charge the company a tax to operate on roads within city limits, the company already had the permits that the state required. The state's permit requirements were not part of the case.
Some sites, had this quote. "Even the Legislature has no power to deny to a citizen the right to travel upon the highway and transport his property in the ordinary course of his business or pleasure, though this right may be regulated in accordance with the public interest and convenience."
(I do not vouch for the accuracy of any of the info in this post)
That's why I prefer the other cases. That show it is a right.