The gun control crowd lost. The vampire rule has been staked, and the truth of the matter is that it never should have been a thing. In a world where people exercised a little common sense and some understanding of people's rights, it wouldn't have.
Unfortunately, not only do we not live in such a world, but we live in one where that same crowd refuses to admit that they crossed the line.
Rather than accept that they can't just blanket ban guns in every store or business and pretend it's a property rights issue--the most moronic argument in recent memory of the Supreme Court--they're doing what they did right after Bruen. They're trying to find a way around the Court's ruling, and some of these are probably just as dumb.
That kind of assistance matters because the existing system puts too much weight on business owners’ silence. We conducted a representative survey of adults in all 50 states and found that many Americans don’t know what their state’s default interpretation of business silence is. Even worse, many shoppers mistakenly assume that if a business hasn’t posted a sign, guns are forbidden.
This all means neither side has reliable information about the environment inside the store. A state program that sends free signs would reduce that confusion immediately.
But states don’t need to stop there. They can adopt a better solution: an affirmative-choice law. Under such a law, stores open to the public would be required, as a condition of doing business with the public, to disclose whether concealed firearms are allowed.
The crucial constitutional point distinguishing such a law from a no-carry default is that requiring an affirmative choice lacks any legal presumption that guns aren’t allowed. An affirmative-choice law would clarify that the state isn’t doing the excluding; guns therefore would only be prohibited on private property when a store owner affirmatively opted to restrict them.
Now, an affirmative choice law would, in fact, meet the letter of the law laid down in Wolford. It would not be the state making the determination, but the businesses themselves.
That doesn't make it any better, if for no other reason than, once again, this is something we do not accept for any other right protected by the Constitution. As Justice Amy Coney Barrett noted, what would the reaction be to banning the hijab in a business? Would it matter if the state didn't explicitly ban it, but forced business owners to say whether they allowed it or not?
I don't see it as that different, though I'm pretty sure it would survive based on the Wolford decision. That doesn't mean it would survive on some other grounds, though, since it's essentially compelling speech.
Smart businesses tend to avoid taking political stands, and allowing guns or not is most definitely a political stand. By compelling them to come down on one side or the other, they're effectively taking away the business owners' free speech rights, as freedom of speech implies the freedom to not speak.
But gun control is inherently authoritarian, so it's not surprising that they think nothing of compelling people to take a political stance against their will, but that doesn't make it less disgusting.
Let's understand that most businesses don't really care all that much about whether armed citizens carry a gun in their businesses or not. The wise among them recognize that we're a defense against criminality that costs them nothing and that the criminals won't obey the signs in the first place. The problem is that the media has done an amazing job of presenting guns in our society as a terrible thing, so if they're pressed to make a stand, they'll likely opt on the side of prohibiting the right to keep and bear arms in their establishments.
If that's a truly held belief, so be it, but compelled speech isn't necessarily a truly held thing.
Anti-gunners lost, but I have to give them credit. They've always got plenty of fight left in them. That's usually a good thing. In this case, though, it's not because the fight they chose is one that would strip us of our rights entirely.
