Long term planning for protecting gun rights

Status
Not open for further replies.

ChanceMcCall

Member
Joined
Dec 22, 2017
Messages
350
Location
Midwest
My wife and I are going to be attending The Gun Rights Policy Conference in Chicago September 22-23 co-hosted by the Second Amendment Foundation and Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms. I am looking for some wisdom from this forum to take with me to that conference.

Intelligent solutions are always complex and never easy. For example: What steps, if any, should be taken to assure that the mentally ill not have access to arms? Is there a way to do that without trampling on 2nd, 4th, and 5th amendment rights?

It is not enough to fight what is going on with easy answers - what we really need are intelligent solutions. Does anyone have any suggestions on how we can turn public opinion around regarding gun ownership and the carrying of guns for defense?
 
What? Holding a gun rights conference in a city that prohibits guns?

Swaying folks on the fence might be the best course of action. The ardent anti will never see self defense as a moral option when confronted with harm.
The majority of mentally ill people never commit violent acts. The very few that do 'go off' are impossible to spot for the most part. Yes, some red flags get waved but most are ignored. It will take the close family and community pointing out problems lurking within.
 
The foundation is a good outfit. However, discussing the impact of mental illness better have participants that are both mental health professionals and expert in gun usage.

The other elephant in the room is the adaptation of one political party's conservative agenda as a purity test for being a worthy gun owner. We've gone over that many times here. Some folks cannot grasp the topic as a problem. That would be a great discussion for long time planning. How to break gun rights support from a political tribal subsection of the population.
 
The ardent anti will never see self defense as a moral option when confronted with harm.

.

One of my peers at the college where I had my classroom shotup got very nasty to me when I said had I been armed I would have shot the kid who did it.

Her reply was she’d rather die than harm someone. She wouldn’t listen to the argument that most people disagree with her, and that some of us have families to provide for. AND we’re willing to fight to defend not only ourselves but those we’re responsible for.

I can’t prove it but I suspect she may have been the one or one in a group that spread a rumor and lie that after the shooting I was illegally carrying.

So I not only agree with you 100% but I have experience with people like that and they’ll go behind your back and do things to cause problems to fight us. In her case she also was given a year off paid and used it to speak on why the 2nd Amendment needs to be repealed.

In my case, I can on,y say that I’m still fighting them after all they’ve done to me as a supporter of the 2nd Amendment.
 
In the long term, "self-defense" is a poor choice of justification for the right to bear arms. Technology will eclipse firearms in that area and the foundation of such a justification will fail. While self-defense shouldn't be neglected, arms-bearing rights ultimately must be seen as something which it is improper for the government to interfere with simply because it serves none of the proper purposes of a government of a free people. For gun rights to be protected, the law must not understood as the government permitting certain things that have been justified for some reason. Instead, it must be seen as restricting the government from interfering with the people where the government has not been permitted. US society has strayed far, very far, from that principle.

I've mentioned this before, and I continue to anticipate a need for pre-emption of property rights on public accommodations. More and more of our society's public accommodations (transportation including streets and conveyances, housing, workplaces, markets, and entertainment venues) are becoming corporate-owned properties. At the moment, arms bearing continues on those properties mostly because detection is impractical. In the long term, we have to anticipate the right of trespass with a firearm can and will be denied. In some states, posted signs have the force of law to deny carry, but in all states the property owner can deny trespass to those who carry.

We're seeing a preview of this with Youtube, Facebook etc. Should those corporate properties be allowed to restrict speech based on firearms content? They are able now and many people side with their property rights over rights of free speech which don't apply to Google's property. But when corporations own the transportation networks and every destination on them, will those property rights continue to overrule the people's other rights? The SCOTUS has ruled otherwise with regard to the 1st Amendment (in Marsh vs. Alabama), asserting that free-speech rights were more important than property rights in a traditional public forum (the sidewalk) within a company-owned town. We don't yet have a similar ruling regarding defacto public forums like Youtube and Facebook, nor do we have a ruling with respect to 2nd Amendment rights on such properties.

The issue of property rights vs. gun rights is not a simple one. Property rights are sacred and cherished in the US. Most of us see it as proper that we control both guns and speech on our property. But most of us don't control properties that are also public accommodations like streets, sidewalks, parks, railways, and street cars. Personally, I wish the future was one where public accommodations remained public, but there is a preponderance of evidence they won't.

Another concern might be corporate gun-control by boycott pressure. We've seen this issue come up recently with financiers colluding to deny services to gun manufacturers. A deregulated firearms industry would not be vulnerable, but one that is highly regulated consequently needs protections. It's almost like nuclear energy, where the regulation is so restrictive, projects need loan guarantees because of regulatory risks. While regulations of firearms makers are not that stifling, they are enough to leave them vulnerable to finance and insurance boycotts. Anti-boycott laws like the Israel Anti-Boycott Act can be very problematic though. There are questions about whether this infringes on free-speech rights, and if there were anti-boycott protection for the firearms maker, one would have to question whether it's like forcing the banker to "bake the cake" against the convictions of their conscience.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top