The Second Amendment has long been treated as a second-class right. What I mean by that, for anyone who isn't sure, is that while other rights are considered sacrosanct by many, things to be preserved and protected without regulation to people's final breath, the Second Amendment is somehow too dangerous to get the same kind of effort.
Those of us who feel otherwise are labeled "extremists."
Yet a lot of people claim that it's no such thing, that we're out of our minds for even suggesting anyone sees it that way. Well, let's take a look at what's happening in Tennessee right now.
Tennessee will count the provisional ballots cast by six people convicted of felonies who had their voting rights recently restored under judges' rulings, but had been placed in limbo after state officials filed a flurry of legal motions arguing that they had to get their gun rights back in order to vote again.
According to letters sent to local election commissions earlier this month, Election Coordinator Mark Goins told officials to count the provisional ballots.
“Although other courts have addressed requests for restoration of rights differently and I disagree with the court's order, in this specific case given the timing and the language in this specific order, we must follow the court order, even though it is not final,” Goins wrote in one letter on Nov. 15.In January, Tennessee's Secretary of State office shocked voting rights advocates when it announced that people convicted of a felony must get their gun rights and other “citizenship rights” restored before they can become eligible to cast a ballot again.
While explaining their decision, the election office pointed to a 2023 state Supreme Court ruling that said all people convicted of felonies applying for reinstated voting rights first get their “full citizenship rights” restored by a judge or show they were pardoned by a governor. Gun rights were among those required, the Secretary of State's office determined.
But that's got shot down and felons have had their voting rights restored while not having their gun rights treated similarly.
What this incident shows is that voting is considered a more fundamental right than the right to keep and bear arms. This is restored to felons almost trivially as if it's an article of faith that everyone has a right to vote. Gun rights, however, can't be restored so easily. No, that right is something different.
See, the issue is that many consider the Second Amendment to be dangerous, something that should be held in reserve because people might misuse it.
Yet let's take a look around us for a moment. Look at some of the people who have been elected to public office over the years. Do you think people aren't misusing their right to vote? People vote for selfish interest versus what's best for the nation all the time. They elect absolute morons, people who think the government can and should do all sorts of things that it can't do, either because of the Constitution or just because the government can't change the laws of the universe.
So why is that right so important to restore easily to people who have broken the law, but not their right to keep and bear arms? Because they don't think it's really a right.
That's what it all boils down to. The truth is that while they may claim "the right to keep and bear arms" is something they support, they never actually treat it like a right at all. In their mind, it's really a privilege.
Voting is a right in their minds, but gun ownership isn't.
Another example is the idea of an ID requirement. For many of these people, requiring an ID to vote is racist because, as they tell it, many people have difficulty getting an ID at all.
Yet they want everyone to have to show ID to get a gun.
So yeah, I'm not interested in believing them when they claim gun rights aren't second-class rights. Too much of their other positions betray them on this for me to ever be that gullible.
