When we talk about gun control, your average advocate of such policies will try to tell you that they support the Second Amendment and freedom in general, but…
Obviously, we don’t buy that. After all, the Second Amendment doesn’t leave a lot of wiggle room open for regulation. The Bruen decision did, but laid the groundwork to determine what the Founding Fathers might have thought of as not infringing on the right.
It’s all about freedom, though. We have the freedom to own firearms for defending our homes, be that from a burglar or an invading army.
In fact, a lot of things out there are about freedom. I’m one of those kinds of people who will do all kinds of things if asked but absolutely balk if told. During the lockdowns, for example, this homebody who is normally happy to stay home and not go anywhere for weeks at a time suddenly wanted to go everywhere and do everything because I was told I couldn’t.
Why do I bring this up?
Because anti-gunners don’t really understand the idea of freedom.
During the first week of December, lawyers representing Anne Arundel County are set to square off against their counterparts employed by the gun rights group, Maryland Shall Issue Inc., in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit to argue over a matter that, frankly, boggles the mind.
Early last year, Republicans and Democrats on the Anne Arundel County Council unanimously approved an ordinance requiring gun sellers to distribute, with each purchase, literature on suicide prevention and conflict resolution. With any other product that carries some danger, this would be regarded as standard, precautionary stuff. But Maryland Shall Issue took the matter to court, where the ordinance was nevertheless upheld by U.S. District Judge Stephanie Gallagher who found, among other things, that the pamphlets were accurate and unbiased. But that wasn’t good enough for the gun rights advocates, who filed an appeal.
So here’s where things stand. The plaintiffs claim that informing customers about how best to keep their guns safe from people who might self-harm is an intolerable infringement of their First Amendment rights.
The key thing the author misses in this? The word “requires.”
If this were a case of a group working with gun stores to provide this information voluntarily, it would be different. I think most gun stores would step up and take part. Suicides that use a firearm help no one, so it’s in everyone’s best interest to try and reduce them as much as we can.
But the law is a mandate. It’s telling stores they have to hand that over with each purchase regardless of any other factor. They don’t have a choice. They don’t have the freedom to decide if they want to take part or not.
As such, it is a violation of their First Amendment rights.
The author of this piece claims these stores are hurting the Second Amendment cause. What the author and most anti-gunners don’t get is that everything went out the window the moment stuff started being mandated.
At that point, you’re telling stores what they must do, even as many would probably do so voluntarily otherwise.
Freedom matters and the moment you start off by trying to take away that freedom, you suddenly have a lot of pushback you wouldn’t have had otherwise.
Is it hurting our cause? Not when you remember that the Second Amendment doesn’t exist in a vacuum. It’s the Founding Fathers insurance policy on our rights. Our cause is individual liberty and infringing on it in any way is an affront to that cause.
It doesn’t get any easier to understand than that, but anti-gunners will put in good time and effort to not get it.
