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Comment by lutorm | Hacker News Reader

Voting is a constitutional right, forming a corporation or getting a library card is not.

Voting is only a Constitutional right for citizens. Hence the need to prove you're a citizen before voting.

Some citizens may be disenfranchised by the proof requirement; e.g. if ID is required but you can't afford to get an ID, you can't vote despite being a citizen.

What about purchasing a firearm?

How was that relevant to the conversation?

He's pointing out that if one believes you should be able to vote without ID because it's a civil right, then you should also be able to buy a gun without ID because it's a civil right.

My guess is that he or she is saying that it's reasonable in both cases to require ID.

You don’t need ID to buy a gun in the US. Private transactions are completely paper and record free. (Unless you are from some non-flyover state.)

It’s only when you sell guns as a dealer that you are required to get ID and whatnot from the purchaser. (Even then, there is no penalty for BUYING the gun without ID; the penalty attaches to the SELLER.)

Quite the opposite. I think it is unreasonable to demand government paperwork as a prerequisite for basic human rights.

If it is not reasonable to demand an ID to blog or to vote, it is not reasonable to demand an ID to obtain arms.

How much identification is needed to exercise one “constitutional right” versus another? Should there be a difference? Though one might legitimately take the question to be flame-baity, I think it’s a valid question in light of the original statement.

It serves as an argument as to what sort of requirements might be reasonable to ask for in order to exercise a constitutional right.

If asking for ID to buy a gun is reasonable, then the argument of whether it’s reasonable to ask for ID to vote can’t be one of principle, but has to be one of degree.

The degree seems pretty large, though, since it's the difference between an unclearly worded constitutional amendment that does not in any plain reading say that "buying a gun" is a constitutional right, to literally the right to have a say in how your nation is run.

I think of it this way: If you think that you're being unconstitutionally prevented from buying a gun because you don't have an ID you can at least vote for people who would change that. If you can't vote because you don't have an ID, though, you're SOL.

Edit: The second amendment even refers to "well regulated", which to me seems to imply that the intent was to, well, have some regulation of the matter.

The meaning of words changes with time, but that can't be allowed to change our laws. Here, "well regulated" is about being reliable, high-performing, and accurate. The term also applies to mechanical devices; one could have a well regulated clock.

While I tend to agree with you that it's a fairly large gap, I can see how others might not see it as a much smaller difference.

jdoliner's comment: voting should require ID stricter than library/corporation

lutorm's comment: "Voting is a constitutional right" (implying that is isn't OK to require an ID)

sneak's comment: "purchasing a firearm" (clearly a constitutional right, so it isn't OK to require ID to purchase one???)

That is perfectly relevant. What sneak's comment does is point out that lutorm's argument implies that we can't have an ID requirement to purchase a firearm. Since this conclusion seems a little crazy, it suggests that lutorm's argument is no good.

I'll add that at least for presidents, the constitution only makes voting a right for 538 specific people. States are not required to let the rest of us participate. Voting is clearly not more of a constitutional right than firearms.

Yeah the latter is the nail in the coffin for my argument when it comes to the United States of America. Many other countries do have the individual right to vote written into their constitutions, though.

It’s not, but people who don’t like the idea of others voting like to obfuscate the conversation with red herrings and non sequiturs.

Depends if you interpret the right to keep arms (i.e. not have them taken away) to equal the right to obtain arms in the first place.

An example: it’s legal to “keep” a pre-1986 machine gun but it’s not legal to obtain a new one for most people in the US.

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