Anti-Rights people don’t much like or understand the Constitution and how it works…but they’re perfectly willing to twist their limited understanding to suit their agenda.
Inevitably, the Second Amendment will be front and center in the national conversation as we try to make sense of yet another act of mass gun violence. But in the wake of the shooting at the Sikh temple, I find myself thinking as much about the First Amendment as the Second. If indeed it turns out that the gunman’s actions in Wisconsin were motivated by a hatred of Sikh religion and culture, the shooting may reveal an unintended consequence of our current interpretation of the Second Amendment: rampant gun violence threatens public safety, which in turn may limit our capacity — or willingness — to openly exercise our First Amendment rights to speech, assembly, or religious expression.
Is one Amendment more important than another? We should not have to choose. But the deadliness and frequency of recent gun violence in America — last year nearly 12,000 people were killed by guns in this country — makes me wonder whether we haven’t already prioritized one over the other. In the gun control debate, we hear a lot about guns as deterrents. But for Sikh-Americans in Wisconsin, or other religious groups all around America, mass gun violence that targets religion might be a different kind of deterrent — a deterrent to free expression of belief. Freedom of religion is protected by law, but in practice, fear for public safety supersedes abstract rights. That fear unravels trust, the fabric of civil society and a shared culture.
In a society overrun with guns, how free can speech be? How free is religion?
Of course mush-mind here seems to miss the elephant in the room. The jerk who shot up the Sikh temple was killed by the police. NOBODY is complaining about that! Compare this to Kent State, or the less tragic Occupy Wall Street.
You see, first the US Constitution doesn’t GRANT rights, but simply PROTECTS them. You have the right to freely speak, associate, worship, gather, protest, publish etc, but that stops at riots, slander, libel, causing a public panic, etc. You also have the right to keep and bear arms, and the right to self-defense, but this does NOT protect the right to MURDER.
The guy was shooting at the police and innocent people, so the cops shot him back. Also its “Arms” not “Guns”, the Sikh leader attempted to stab the shooter, he unfortunately was unsuccessful, but if he had killed this guy, he wouldn’t face any charges.
Further, dipshit doesn’t seem recognize how free the Jews in Germany or the Soviet Union, or the Buddhists in Burma had to worship freely when they were disarmed?
Every freedom can be abused…the only answer to this is MORE freedom, not less. Anti-Rights people abuse their 1st Amendment rights by lying and fabricating “facts” to support the gun-ban agenda. I don’t ask for restrictions of them posting, publishing or broadcasting, instead I exercise MY RIGHTS to fight back.
Same goes with the guns. You’ll notice that the shooter was STOPPED by ANOTHER GUN! And trust me there is little difference between the cop and his gun and me and my gun in this specific instance.
