The we must ban guns meme is of course cranked up once again in the wake of California’s terrorist attack.
I am willing to and in fact claim we must as a society have a public and open debate about what we should do in regards to terrorism, the Second Amendment, immigration and all other facets of what happened in California — and in the other incidents across this land.
I have only one rule: All points of debate must be grounded in and resort to logic; those that do not must be discarded and those who refuse to debate on that basis must be ignored.
This is a serious time for serious people. Getting shot or blown up is serious. But our Constitutional Republic is also serious; it is a unique political experiment among the various governments of the world, and to dilute or worse lose it over an un-thinking overreaction not only risks destroying our way of life it is likely to make our lives more dangerous rather than less.
Now let’s look at the alleged “reasonable” response that the NY Times ran this morning.
It is not necessary to debate the peculiar wording of the Second Amendment. No right is unlimited and immune from reasonable regulation.
False. A right is immune from prior restraint. The First Amendment is absolute. This does not absolve you from responsibility should you exercise that right in a blatantly and grossly irresponsible manner. This is the infamous “fire in a crowded theater” example so often cited. But what is being intentionally mis-characterized is that you cannot be forced to wear a muzzle when entering a theater because you might utter the word “Fire” when there isn’t one.
There is nothing wrong with punishing someone who falsely claims there is a fire in a crowded theater when there is not, just as there is nothing wrong with punishing someone who brandishes or otherwise uses a firearm for an impermissible purpose.
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