Rights are rights. They’re supposed to apply to each of us equally and they’re supposed to be treated equally in turn. The Bill of Rights in particular enshrined sacred rights that apply to each and every one of us.

Yet it never fails that some people see no problem limiting the Second Amendment while actively opposing any limitations on the First. How would these folks feel if the rules were flipped? What if the restrictions that apply to the Second Amendment were also applied to the First Amendment?

While an Indiana lawmaker touched on this just a bit recently with his bill to require journalists to be licensed, it’s still just a drop in the bucket. There’s a lot more out there, so let’s have a little fun.

First, Rep. Jim Lucas and his Indiana bill is a good start, but let’s expand it. Anyone wanting to discuss politics in public must undergo a licensing process before they’re allowed to voice their opinions. The process should include a background check and a fee at a minimum, but mandatory training on the safe use of your free speech rights will be required by many states.

Convicted felons aren’t entitled to voice an opinion at all. That means a criminal background check whenever someone goes to a media site in order to form an opinion.

You’re free to have an opinion inside your home…but if you have children, you must keep your opinions to yourself.

Oh, and don’t let your child have a shirt with a political point of view on it, otherwise they may find themselves suspended due to zero tolerance rules.

If you want to get a newspaper, you have to wait three days to make sure you won’t misuse the information contained within it. During that time, the purchaser will undergo a background check for the public’s safety.

By the way, do you enjoy consuming news from a variety of outlets? Forget it. You’re limited to two, so deal with it.

Also, since you can share your speech, you’re also limited to two devices for that purpose. You can have either a cell phone or a computer. One or the other. There need to be reasonable limits put in place, don’t you agree?

Seriously, we could go all day on this, showing just how restricted the Second Amendment is. While people love to opine on just how it’s easier to buy a gun than to do everything else, it’s bull. The truth is if any other civil liberty were as restricted as the Second Amendment, it would be amazing just how swiftly the people who kvetch about guns being too easy to get would freak out. They’d go out of their everloving minds.

Yet each of these is based on an anti-gun law or proposal that has been made in recent weeks. I didn’t say a think about repealing the First Amendment, which I could have since even that has been proposed.

Do I actually think any of this is a good thing? Of course not. Rights should be sacrosanct, be they free speech, freedom of religion, or the right to keep and bear arms. I don’t ascribe to many limits on those, so no, I don’t want to see any of these happen.

Yet this is the norm for gun owners. This is what we deal with if we want to exercise our constitutional rights, and it’s a pain, so it would behoove people to stop flapping their gums about how easy it is to buy a gun.