Quick: a law is passed that prevents you from carrying certain “hate speech” or “microaggressive literature” such as Huckleberry Finn, the latest Ann Coulter book, an edition of Mein Kampf, or a magazine that has more than 16 pages of subversive commentary on it that “triggers” certain people.
Or mass crates of pornography, a conservative journal of thought, the latest edition of Guns & Ammo — or if a leftist, perhaps ISJ or the writings of Baidou or Zizek? Heck — a Bible, Quran, or the latest edition of Dianetics…
Would you tolerate it? No matter how despicable or loathsome the speech was?
Probably not. America’s First Amendment rights are sacrosanct, something that we treasure as the very foundational framework of who we are and what separates us from the rest of the world. It is the singular gift given to us by the Baptist and Methodist preachers who would rather risk imprisonment than conform, and it was the right to bear arms — enshrined in the Second Amendment — that won America her independence and confirmed a natural right that defends and protects all the others.
Mark Herring, in his zeal to dismantle everything former AG Ken Cuccinelli did, would emphatically disagree.
But hold on there, partner… looks like you’ve had a little too much to think. I mean, who really needs high capacity magazines of 16 pages of information? In an era of Twitter, shouldn’t we really need just 8 pages? Consider the environmental impact too of all that printing. Did the Founding Fathers need 400 page books?
Ergo the very problem with the mindset of gun-grabbers such as Mark Herring.
Sadly, each and every single one of these arguments has been used against the Second Amendment, from limiting the number of rounds in a magazine, to banning “assault weapons” to using environmental concerns to raise the cost of ammunition.
To these gun-grabbers, your 2A rights ought to be restricted, if for no other reason than it is the view of progressives that human beings are — at their very basic level — low, base, vulgar, and not to be trusted. In stark contrast to the long-held belief that conservatives should be instinctively trusted as citizens and not subjects, the progressive mindset has a rank hostility towards their fellow man wymyn citizen person persyn individuals. The soft tyranny of low expectations makes the world a padded room — that is what Herring’s position ultimately represents.
Instinctively, we know this to be the case time and time again. Where a scalpel is required, conformist demand the hammer — and when those pesky rights interfere with the visions of the utopians, new rights are invented to supersede the old. We see it time and time again, and the new inquisitors simply replace the old with every election cycle.
Constitutional rights such as the 2A? Ought to be abrogated in Herring’s worldview… because human beings should not be treated as citizens, but patronized — and at all times, shepherded and educated by the state.
This is the problem with concealed carry at the end of the day, not that I am any distinct opponent of CHP as such. Citizens should be trusted to carry a firearm just as one might be trusted to carry a smartphone. After all, if the pen is mightier than the sword, and words and ideas far more dangerous than the tools used to carry them out, what have we to fear of our fellow citizens exercising their constitutional rights — be that free speech or concealed carry?
Heck, shouldn’t we be more concerned about concealed thought? Shouldn’t everyone’s thoughts and opinions be regulated as well with the same fanatical fervor that some inquisitors seek to impose on firearms?
A far better solution — and one that the General Assembly ought to take up right away — is constitutional carry. If the old adage that an armed society is a polite society rings true, then the perfect antidote for Herring’s fanatic and puritanical progressive radicalism is as simple as Patrick Henry.
Let’s be very clear what Herring’s objective is. This has nothing to do with public safety, mental health, or any other excuse his lobbyist friends in the gun-grabber lobby would rather use. This is an abrogation of the 2A rights not only of those coming here from other states, but the first step in infringing upon them as Virginians.
In 1775, Patrick Henry and an army of Virginians marched on Williamsburg when Lord Dumnore confiscated the powder from the magazine, ostensibly to prevent it from falling into the hands of patriots. If Virginia has nothing else, it is a long tradition of understanding that the right to bear arms protects and defends all other rights.
Herring would be wise to learn from Dunmore’s example.
