How Tide is Turning on Gun Control Efforts

For a while now, it’s felt like gun control advocates were gaining ground. They couldn’t do much at the federal level, but they were getting stuff at the state level. What’s more, the courts were upholding it in many places. This was bad news for our gun rights.

But then the Bruen decision came down and things seemed to change.

In fact, those changes are big. However, other changes are happening and we should probably talk a bit more about them.

The Supreme Court of the United States, as well as the US District Court in the State of Illinois, have issued decisions recently that are easily summed up as: Human rights cannot be abridged. And why does that matter? It matters because if something is a right, and it’s recognized as such, it should be recognized everywhere —not just certain places or times.

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Americans have the right, everywhere they go, to be safe in their person. Just as our Fourth Amendment right to protection from unreasonable search and seizure applies in the entire country, so does the Second. Just as the right to privacy in the 14th Amendment applies across the country, so does the Second. We are seeing a beautiful surge in people questioning why our Second Amendment rights have been abridged for so long!

The status quo of abridged rights being challenged is a reflection of several things:

• The ability of private citizens to access and gather information to support their case. Searching court documents and laws is easier than ever and it’s allowing people to understand the laws of our country more fully.
• Many grassroots organizations have a clear goal of removing the abridgments of rights, and actively pursuing court cases to this end.
• The common use of firearms is getting more exposure due to mainstream media losing its monopoly on information. It’s not uncommon to own and use ARs, AKs, semi-automatic pistols; and it IS legal and permissible for people to own full-auto firearms with the right paperwork. (However, the required National Firearms Act paperwork is still an arduous and lengthy process under the ATF. It is also cost-prohibitive for some.) There is evidence, however, that the government stranglehold in this area is starting to lift.

A lot of people will claim that all rights have limits, and I suppose you could say that. However, those limits are usually limited to how exercising a right might well result directly in harming someone else.

For example, I can say what I want so long as it doesn’t harm someone else. The notorious “can’t yell ‘fire’ in a crowded theater” case–which isn’t current case law anyway–wasn’t about yelling the word “fire” but about creating a panic and people being hurt. Defamation laws don’t exist to keep me from saying unkind things about others, but to keep me from lying and creating reputational harm that will negatively impact that person’s life and livelihood.

On another front, the Fourth Amendment holds firm, but the limit to that right is if the police have probable cause to believe a crime is happening right then and that if they don’t bust in, someone is going to be hurt.

Those are all limits that we can look at an understand.

But limits on the Second Amendment are different.

By the standard outlined above, a reasonable limit on the Second Amendment is not shooting into a crowd of people. I think we can all get behind this being illegal.

The media, however, has presented things as otherwise and did so for decades. Now, thanks to alternative forms of media, people can see the truth. They can see and understand that things are changing. 

That’s very good news.