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Showing Original Post only (View all)Ban the Open Carry of Firearms [View all]
When militia members and white supremacists descended on Charlottesville, Va., last Saturday with Nazi flags and racist placards, many of them also carried firearms openly, including semiautomatic weapons. They came to intimidate and terrify protesters and the police. If you read reports of the physical attacks they abetted, apparently their plan worked.
They might try to rationalize their conduct as protected by the First and Second Amendments, but lets not be fooled. Those who came to Charlottesville openly carrying firearms were neither conveying a nonviolent political message, nor engaged in self-defense nor protecting hearth and home.
Plain and simple, public terror is not protected under the Constitution. That has been the case throughout history. And now is the time to look to that history and prohibit open carry, before the next Charlottesville.
Historically, lawmakers have deemed open carry a threat to public safety. Under English common law, a group of armed protesters constituted a riot, and some American colonies prohibited public carry specifically because it caused public terror. During Reconstruction, the military governments overseeing much of the South responded to racially motivated terror (including the murder of dozens of freedmen and Republicans at the 1866 Louisiana Constitutional Convention) by prohibiting public carry either generally or at political gatherings and polling places. Later, in 1886, a Supreme Court decision, Presser v. Illinois, upheld a law forbidding groups of men to parade with arms in cities and towns unless authorized. For states, such a law was necessary to the public peace, safety and good order.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/17/opinion/open-carry-charlottesville.html
They might try to rationalize their conduct as protected by the First and Second Amendments, but lets not be fooled. Those who came to Charlottesville openly carrying firearms were neither conveying a nonviolent political message, nor engaged in self-defense nor protecting hearth and home.
Plain and simple, public terror is not protected under the Constitution. That has been the case throughout history. And now is the time to look to that history and prohibit open carry, before the next Charlottesville.
Historically, lawmakers have deemed open carry a threat to public safety. Under English common law, a group of armed protesters constituted a riot, and some American colonies prohibited public carry specifically because it caused public terror. During Reconstruction, the military governments overseeing much of the South responded to racially motivated terror (including the murder of dozens of freedmen and Republicans at the 1866 Louisiana Constitutional Convention) by prohibiting public carry either generally or at political gatherings and polling places. Later, in 1886, a Supreme Court decision, Presser v. Illinois, upheld a law forbidding groups of men to parade with arms in cities and towns unless authorized. For states, such a law was necessary to the public peace, safety and good order.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/17/opinion/open-carry-charlottesville.html
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But what about Antonin Scalia and his "discovery" of what he called "original intent"?
guillaumeb
Aug 2017
#1
"Gun Control" is the most effective form of firearm proliferation known to this country. n/t
Decoy of Fenris
Aug 2017
#5
Civil Liberties Body ACLU Will No Longer Defend Gun-Carrying Protest Groups
SecularMotion
Aug 2017
#16
Do you support denying a Constitutional right based on being on a government list? The ACLU doesn't:
friendly_iconoclast
Aug 2017
#18
Their argument against using the no-fly watchlist is that the system is broken.
SecularMotion
Aug 2017
#20
What about states already using those lists to deny gun permits? New Jersey does:
friendly_iconoclast
Aug 2017
#21