WELL-REGULATED STUPIDITY
Some gun wackos in south-central Kansas, and I'm sure elsewhere, are now actually boycotting stores and other establishments that hang those little red signs that prohibit guns. Out of 140 storefronts in one town, only 14 had the signs, and those were mainly financial institutions and medical practices — places, I admit, where the need for armed self-defense could arise at any second.
One wacko spokesman said, "What that sign is telling the majority of us, myself in particular, is that (store) is against the Constitution of the United States, which gives us the right to bear arms."
Yeah.
I'm sure the framers foresaw well-regulated militias forming at The Gap.
Hello, dude. Stores and doctors' offices and the like are a little something called PRIVATE PROPERTY. Maybe you've heard of it? You're always invoking its defense as a reason to arm yourself.
Your constitutional rights are against the government, not private individuals. You can't burn a flag in my living room or insult my mother or practice misogynistic, homophobic, fundamentalist voodoo — and claim your constitutional rights have been violated when I kick your ass to the curb.
Stores are private property, too, just like my house — with the exception that they engage in interstate commerce and are hence subject to more regulation. They can't, for example, deny someone service because he is black or because he is in a wheelchair. I'm sure you know this already because you were no doubt at the forefront of the civil rights movement. (Gun folk, I have noticed, are always championing Constitutional liberties — wasn't it a well-armed militia that got women the right to vote? I'm pretty sure all those broads were packing. And wasn't it gun folk who rallied to desegregate public schools and give women reproductive choice and criminal suspects the right to not have a confession tortured out of them? And wasn't it gun folk who convinced the Supreme Court that police can't come into your house and arrest you for making love with someone of the same sex? I'd have to re-read my history, but I'm 99 percent sure that all the great champions of the Constitution were well-armed militiamen and militia-gals.)
Nonetheless. As big a supporter as you are of the Constitution — always going to bat for fellow Americans in need — you should understand its parameters — and just live with the fact that you can't bring a deadly weapon into my store if I say you can't.
posted by kc @ 11:41 AM
16 comments
16 Comments:
Well, if they're boycotting, at least they won't be coming in with their guns.
Yeah. How do you encourage a boycott?
Reminds me of First Amendment misconceptions regarding time, place and manner. "You cannot walk the halls playing the tuba during regular school hours," I told my J1 students, though after their media law exam, it would have been fun to try.
No one knows what Amendment II means, because there has never been a federal appellate case where it has even been raised as a legal issue.
And an amendment with no application is an amendment with little power.
What I was trying to say in this post is that gun lovers try to argue that they have a right to bear arms in case the government gets heavy-handed and tries to deny people their constitutional rights — in case we have to have an armed rebellion to protect liberty and the pursuit of happiness for all. And yet the gun people, by and large, have not been associated with ANY of the great causes that shaped the living document that is our Constitution. They cite the Constitution for their narrow purposes, they say its preservation is their reason for their passion to bear arms, but they do not, as a group, really respect it, as evidenced by the extremely powerful gun lobby's failure to be at the forefront of any other constitutional issue, except perhaps arguing that income tax is unconstitutional.
I find that noteworthy, regardless of what the courts have said the Second Amendment means.
I understand your post. My comment was meant to complement it.
But don't you think the meaning of the Second Amendment is largely irrelevant to the discussion? Even if the Supreme Court gave it the broadest interpretation possible, the one most favorable to gun lovers, it still would never be read as a right that you had against private property owners. It would remain a right you had against the government, just like all the other amendments in the Bill of Rights.
Exactly. Not only does the amendment not give people the rights they say it does, it doesn't give them any rights at all.
That doesn't support your point, but it supports your position, and it isn't intended to disagree with or dismiss your point. It complements your argument.
Yesterday I came across an article in the “Christian Century” that excerpted a speech Bill Moyers recently gave at WestPoint. He claimed (in front of a room full of officers for the standing army) that our dear “founding fathers” never intended a standing army for these United States. Rather they expected freedom to be defended by the citizen militia, assembled only when needed. Standing armies, says Moyers (on behalf of the framers), are the tool of tyrants, despots and emperors and inherently lead to abuse of executive power. They offer a leader the ability to go to war with soldiers-for-hire instead of with the consent of the people. Which means a king (or president) can then use any motivation to wage war, including personal aggrandizement, vengeance or the desire for fame.
That has nothing to do directly with the right to carry firearms onto personal property. Anybody know what the penalty is for violating the hideous “no-guns allowed” sign? And what scenario would transpire to warrant prosecution? We are taking about concealed weapons right?
Ben, I'm not sure what you mean by "it doesn't give them any rights at all."
AEL, good question about the penalty. I'm not finding anything in a cursory search. The signs mean no guns period, not just concealed ones. I'm guessing the scenario would be that a store owner sees a customer with a gun or is told the customer has a gun and would ask that person to leave. If he didn't leave, the store owner could have the police remove him. I don't know if the charge would be simple trespassing then or something specifically related to the gun. I'll try to find out.
As I said earlier, an amendment with no application is an amendment with little power.
It has never been invoked yet, so it has never given anyone any rights yet.
Yes, I know what you said. I was asking for clarification. The amendment has been invoked, many times. The most extended discussion of it was United States v. Miller in 1939 (which allowed sawed-off shotguns to be banned — In the absence of any evidence tending to show that possession or use of a "shotgun having a barrel of less than eighteen inches in length" at this time has some reasonable relationship to the preservation or efficiency of a well regulated militia, we cannot say that the Second Amendment guarantees the right to keep and bear such an instrument.), but it has been at least mentioned dozens of times since. I don't see how the fact that there's not a crystal clear Supreme Court ruling means the amendment has no application.
Plus, the right of states and Congress to regulate firearms (banning certain types, requiring licenses, age restrictions, waiting periods, etc.) has been broadly affirmed, if by no other means than the failure to successfully challenge and overturn them).
Sorry if I am missing your point.
AEL, this is what I found regarding penalties:
Businesses can prohibit anyone from coming onto their property carrying concealed weapons as long as the business has posted the ban on a sign.
People who violate that can be charged with a class B misdemeanor, which has a penalty of up to six months in jail and a fine.
There are certain businesses and properties that have the ban built into the statute and aren't required to post signs: churches, public and private schools, colleges, government buildings, and bars or restaurants where more than 50 percent of the business is in alcohol or liquor sales.
Those who carry concealed weapons onto those properties can be charged with a class A misdemeanor, which has a penalty of up to a year in jail and a fine.
I guess my Constitutional Law professor lied to us. He said it had never even been mentioned in any appellate cases.
I guess he's like his wife (one of the few completely incompetent teachers I have known), who regularly told us things that were contrary to the caselaw and statutes.
The next time I have a discussion about something I learned from him, I'll have to look it up myself to see whether he was right.
Well the country has had a few armed uprisings of people who felt the laws and/or their implementation were tyrannical. These date all the way to the Whiskey Rebellion in the 1790’s. The government has always been quick to use force to put these down. Judging by history, to take up arms against the U.S. Government means first, that you will fail, and second, that you stand a good chance of ending up dead. I’m not a bit surprised that all the successful civil reforms were non-violent (on the part of the reformers) affairs.
If it was thought that it would be best to limit the government’s actions to control privately owned guns, say for crime protection, then the gun folk should work for an amendment that says that. But the protection-from-tyranny argument is crap. The Second Amendment is the worst one on the book. Instead of trying to dodge it, I’d like to see the Court decree that they can see no application of the Amendment to the country today. It could be a vestigial amendment.
I think the labor movement — the liberal martyrs who brought us eight-hour work days and the minimum wage and collective bargaining power and all the things that made the middle class truly prosperous before Reagan began to systematically destroy the unions — got pretty violent at times, but I think the protesters were brandishing sticks and clubs and such, for the most part, not guns, and they were the ones who ended up dead. Their greatest weapon was solidarity and the refusal to work, not a handgun.
That sounds about right. The American public has long had strong sympathy for the victim. So when a bunch of unarmed strikers get clubbed to death by Pinkertons and torn up by attack dogs, the labor movement gains strength. But if bomb throwers murder people, those radical elements lose support. I think one of the reasons that this country doesn’t have a major labor/socialist party is because violent splinter groups made it easier for the government and business to demonize the entire left. Thus, the successful labor reforms came from moderates who kept their distance from the violent groups.
It no doubt helps that so many non-violent movements were successful. If you believe that the system will yield to non-violent efforts, you are more likely to remain committed to non-violence. Places in the world with brittle and reactionary societies are far more likely to suffer from violent protest. Hard to say too much in praise of civil society and the rule of law.
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