Guns and the law

The First Amendment, despite its place in the Constitution, is not a limitless protection of our free speech rights.

It is illegal to divulge classified government secrets, to defraud business partners and to engage in a number of other types of speech that are unprotected. And, so it must be in order for our society to work. Constitutional protection of a right does not mean an absolute prohibition of laws that abridge the right. It means such restrictions are subject to specific and intense judicial scrutiny.

Why does this logic collapse when we move our discussion to the next amendment in our beloved Bill of Rights? Why do we regard the Second Amendment as an absolute and insurmountable barrier to any reasonable restrictions?

The time has come to reject that as nonsense. Just like our freedom of speech, reasonable restrictions are essential. Of course we can have them; we already have some. The National Firearms Act of 1934 established strict regulation of the ownership of certain types weapons that are thankfully absent from today’s streets: fully automatic firearms, artillery pieces, explosives and so on. We have enacted gun control in the past. We can and should do it again.

We can expand NFA-type restrictions to include the types of weapons that are killing us today: the deadly bump stock devices used in Las Vegas, or even all semi-automatic firearms with detachable magazines. We can do gun buybacks for newly prohibited weapons.

Australia hasn’t had a mass shooting since their similar 1996 reforms. We can demand universal background checks, increase waiting periods and so on. We can do any or all of these things. Or, we can continue to do nothing except send our thoughts and prayers to ever more victims.

Nate Eklof Madison