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Background checks for journalists

Discussion in 'Sports and News' started by Mark2010, Feb 19, 2013.

  1. Dick Whitman

    Dick Whitman Well-Known Member

    It's written in a way that indicates that it's a reason that the amendment exists, and probably the primary reason, but I don't think that the right is dependent on the existence/necessity of a well-regulated militia. It makes me wonder - and I'm sure there's research on this out there - if the idea of banning hunting weaponry would have been considered so absurd at that point in history that it wouldn't even merit protection, or at least mention, in the Bill of Rights. The Second Amendment, the argument would proceed, wasn't meant to limit the reasons for arms possession with its mention of a well-regulated militia. It was meant, on the contrary, to expand the reasons to something that could foreseeably be infringed.

    As far as Rush goes: Different amendments, different underlying logic, different histories, different development. You don't have to pass a background check to exercise your right to a jury or right to be free of search and seizure or right to freedom of religion, either.
     
  2. 93Devil

    93Devil Well-Known Member

    DW, if you are a felon can you sit on a jury? Vote?

    There is some degree of background checking going on to all of us when you really think about it.
     
  3. Dick Whitman

    Dick Whitman Well-Known Member

    Good point about juries.

    I think where Rush Limbaugh's argument falls apart is that there really aren't any particular rights that journalists have that every day citizens do not in terms of exercising the right to free speech. Free speech and free press are pretty much one and the same, doctrinally. So there seemingly does not exist the kind of split in the law between the two groups to begin saddling the exercise of one with restrictions and not the other. This would be particularly difficult in the era of the democratization of media.
     
  4. Azrael

    Azrael Well-Known Member


    Understood.

    And I don't mention it here in relation to gun ownership, but rather in relation to Limbaugh's comic jiu-jitsu regarding registration.

    Seems to me the phrase "well-regulated" puts elaborate gun registration and licensing mechanisms squarely in the territory of what's fair when discussing guns.
     
  5. Dick Whitman

    Dick Whitman Well-Known Member

    Not to mention the part that everyone seems to forget: Antonin Scalia, known liberal icon, said in Heller that various restrictions would be A-OK. So that seems to foreclose the argument, forever and ever amen, that all restrictions are violations of the Second Amendment. At this point, we're just playing with the dividing line and trying to find a satisfying way to establish it that isn't arbitrary.
     
  6. Mizzougrad96

    Mizzougrad96 Active Member

    I had a pretty extensive one at my current job. The HR lady said, "Are we going to find anything?" and I said, "Well, I was arrested and released once in college for being involved in a bar fight in San Diego while I was visiting my sister..." and she laughed... When I was hired, I asked if the San Diego incident had come up when they did the check, and it had not, presumably because I was never charged.

    They had everything from my driving record and stuff like that.

    I don't know what anyone would expect to get out of background searches for journalists. The only reason I've ever heard of a person having an offer rescinded is driving record.
     
  7. Dick Whitman

    Dick Whitman Well-Known Member

    Not journalism, but the background check for the bar is grueling. At a meeting, they told us, "If you ever got stopped and hassled by a mall cop when you were in middle school, it better be on there." They asked for all school incidents from elementary school onward. At some point during the process, I received an email asking for my middle school's address and phone number.
     
  8. Dick Whitman

    Dick Whitman Well-Known Member

    I think anyone using the Second Amendment as a talisman against all gun controls must, indeed.
     
  9. Azrael

    Azrael Well-Known Member


    Hardly a shtick.

    It's a reductio ad absurdum pointing out that we already place common sense limits on "arms" and the 2nd Amendment.
     
  10. Armchair_QB

    Armchair_QB Well-Known Member

    Actually, it's the height of stupidity. A missile system is not a gun.
     
  11. Dick Whitman

    Dick Whitman Well-Known Member

    Can you point out the word "gun" in the Second Amendment?
     
  12. Mizzougrad96

    Mizzougrad96 Active Member

    I always wonder what they would do with something like that. I'd be very curious if there is a single teacher at my middle school who was there when I was, and the chances that if there was that would remember me are probably zero. Do they care if you were suspended for fighting when you were 13?
     
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