What does a virus have to do with a gun? Nothing. Nothing at all.
Yet here we are, watching as plenty of people use a virus to justify trying to deny us our Second Amendment rights. We’ve written about a lot of them. Still more are out there that we haven’t touched on. Regardless, there’s this idea that the virus somehow takes precedent over everything.
Over at Raw Story, they managed to tie a potential Supreme Court decision that’s been months in the making to COVID-19.
Titled, “The Supreme Court is poised to extend gun rights at the worst possible time,” it’s yet another attempt by an anti-gun media to frame COVID-19 as somehow superseding our Second Amendment rights. And yet, what evidence to they give that this is the “worst possible time?”
None.
As the deadly COVID-19 contagion sweeps across the country, gun sales are surging, spurred in many regions by panic buying and purchases by first-time firearm owners. Fearful and insecure Americans are taking advantage of weak and ineffective gun-control laws and stocking up, as President Trump might say, “like never before.”
Meanwhile, the Supreme Court is poised to issue its first major Second Amendment opinion in more than a decade in a case that originated, fittingly, in New York City, now the epicenter of the COVID-19 outbreak in the United States. The case—New York State Rifle & Pistol Association Inc. v. City of New York—has the potential to vastly extend the rights of gun owners, and not just in New York, but throughout the entire nation.
The rest of the post goes on about the recent history of the Second Amendment at the Supreme Court and how the city of New York didn’t even bother to defend the law in question, making it a guaranteed with for gun rights with the only question being how big of a win.
Yet at no point does the writer make a case for how this is the worst possible time. Instead, they simply argue that New York City is the epicenter of the outbreak as if that settles it once and for all.
It doesn’t.
In fact, now is the perfect time for the expansion of our Second Amendment rights.
Currently, we’re dealing with a pandemic and staring down the barrel of a potential economic collapse. Such a situation may well cause people to get desperate. Once that happens, people will do all sorts of things to keep their families afloat. That also includes hurting other people either for money or for food, depending on how far gone we actually are.
That means people may well need to defend themselves. I’m sorry, but diplomacy doesn’t stop someone governed by a rumbling belly, much less one with starving kids.
While the folks over at Raw Story are free to believe that this is the wrong time to expand gun rights–and I’d love for them to tell me when they feel a good time to do so is, because we all know the answer to that question–they’re going to have to do a better job of making that case.
