Driving a car is not a Right, but a privilege. Keeping and bearing arms WITHOUT INFRINGEMENT is a Right, guaranteed in the U.S. Constitution. What we do have "licenses" for is carrying, so those who carry for their defense have the proper training. Even that is an infringement, however, given some states refuse law-abiding people their right to bear arms by denying them a license. And arresting them if they carry without one. Even though the Constitution says nothing about the government being able to "license" ANY of our Rights.
Would you like the government to require a "license" for Free Speech or Religion? Where would you like to go, and how far?
Eh, no, license requirements are in no way an infringement of rights. If you want to go by the literal text of the Constitution instead of the history of interpretations which the Supreme Court has given that clarifies how the Second Amendment is actually applied, then there's a damned strong argument for saying that only those enrolled in well regulated militias should be allowed to have guns. Why? Here's the text of the Second Amendment: "A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed." It's saying militias are important, therefore right to bear arms shall not be infringed, which could easily be interpreted to mean that only militia members have that right. Licenses could easily be required to meet the "well regulated" part of the militia thing, because licenses are totally a form of regulation, so there's no conflict there. Also, the Bill of Rights is about further limitations on Congress for the vast majority of it, Second Amendment included, so all it means in plain text is that the federal government can't infringe the "right to bear arms." State level though? Depends on the state's own laws.
Of course that's not how it was interpreted over the years, so that's not how it is. Wanna know how the Supreme Court has actually ruled on these things? In the ruling of
Presser v. Illinois in 1886, one thing they noted was that the Second Amendment only prevents
Congress from regulating gun ownership, not individual states. Then later in 1939, in
United States v. Miller, they ruled that it was actually fine for the federal government to require people to register certain kinds of firearms, in this case meaning fully automatic weapons and short-barreled rifles and shotguns, because by their ruling such weaponry had nothing to do with the kind of arms that would be expected of a well regulated militia. Then in a couple cases in 2008 and 2010,
District of Columbia v. Heller and
McDonald v. City of Chicago, they finally clarified that yes it's totally legal to own a firearm for legal non-militia reasons like self defense, which apparently had been sort of an unspoken understanding for a long time. EDIT: Oh, and that McDonald case was the one that finally clarified that the right to bear arms applied at a state level. In 2010. That's how recently the right to bear arms actually became applicable to state governments. Seriously. Luckily, given the previous rulings on regulation being cool, states requiring licenses is
still not a violation of rights.
Either way you look at it, license requirements are not an infringement. Plain text reading would mean perhaps only militias can have guns as far as the federal government is concerned, but the state governments can do whatever the hell they want. Adding in the Supreme Court interpretations it's still totally fine for state governments to not allow people to bear arms, and it's fine for the federal government to do some regulations, but it
does remove that pesky militia concern. Seriously, that no infringement thing isn't at all universal, no matter how much you'd like it to be.
Also, fun fact, until the Supreme Court ruled that actually yes the rights of freedom of speech and religion should apply to states too, it didn't. For quite a long while in the history of the US, states didn't have to give their citizens those rights. That changed because they interpreted the 14th Amendment to mean that federal protections had to be applied to states as well. Wanna know when the Supreme Court decided those rights actually applied to the state level governments too?
Freedom of speech, 1925;
freedom of the press, 1931;
free exercise of religion, 1940;
establishment of religion, 1947. For the majority of the history of the United States, the states could have absolutely required licenses for free speech or religion. The Constitution is nowhere near as far-reaching or all-inclusive as you think, and it used to be far less so before Supreme Court rulings deemed it otherwise. The plain text of the document is far less important than you may realize. Supreme Court interpretations and rulings can change and
have changed these things drastically, so don't get too caught up on the plain text reading.
