The wide availability of guns and their misuse is leading to restrictions on Americans’ freedom, and that needs to be part of the firearms debate. https://t.co/DhEoGdVrdn

— ACLU (@ACLU) July 18, 2018

From the ACLU:

In recent months, the nation has been debating gun control issues with renewed intensity. One of the principal arguments that firearms advocates advance against restrictions on guns is freedom: Americans ought to be free to own guns, and free to defend ourselves, and that broad ownership of guns by citizens is a check against the possibility of oppression by our own government.

Yes, yes it is.

My colleague Louise Melling has laid out the ACLU’s views on guns here — that while gun regulations must be unbiased and subject to due process protections, the Constitution does permit limits on firearms sale and ownership.

Actually it doesn’t.  The word are “the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.”  Infringed means “to encroach upon in a way that violates law or the rights of another.”

The Supreme Court put restrictions on the Second Amendment in the worst case of judicial activism in American history.

Overall, the ACLU does not generally engage in either side of the gun control issue. But we do care about freedom, and I have noticed a growing trend: the wide availability of guns and their misuse leading to restrictions on Americans’ freedom. Advocates for expansive gun rights who are serious in their concern over expanded government powers might consider how this is the case.

How so?

Mass shootings create a pervasive sense of insecurity and anxiety that politicians and policymakers will inevitably seek to address. Throughout history, people who live in warlike times and places have built walls, while residents of peaceful kingdoms have tended to live without them. When particular security threats arise (real or perceived), societies respond — through policy, behavior, and architecture. Like calluses responding to friction, government power builds up where threats are perceived. If Americans continue to increasingly think of each of their fellow citizens, including children, as a potentially mortal threat at every public gathering, this fear will inevitably lead to more and more government reach into American life.

I see, feelings.  You feel unsafe around guns so we have to lose our gun rights.

Since criminals use guns for illegal activity, and you don’t like cops, restricting gun rights for law abiding people means… less cops.

How about this.  There are peaceful Muslims (at least that’s what I’m told).  There are also Islamic terrorists.  I fear Islamic terrorism and the result of 9/11 was the TSA.

So how about we restrict the rights of law abiding Muslims to I can have less fear and we can ease up airport security and stop having the TSA feel up our kids?

That work for you?

Let’s examine one of the implications of this trend a little more in-depth: law enforcement investigations of “suspicious” individuals.” After the Parkland attacks, there was a discussion about the FBI’s failure to detect shooter Nikolas Cruz ahead of time. Some of the people around Cruz were alarmed by signs that he might do something violent, and they called in tips to the agency, which did not investigate.

It may be that the FBI was incompetent here, and we do often see law enforcement failing to respond sufficiently to some threats, such as domestic violence. But it’s also possible that the tips the agency received were the kind of thing that agents hear all the time, and that there were understandable reasons the agents did not spring into action. But either way, the implication of expecting the government to detect and prevent every mass shooting is believing the government should play an enormously intrusive role in American life.

So now I have to lose my gun rights because the incompetency of goverment bureaucrats.  That’s a hell of an argument.

I have to give up my rights because the goverment isn’t all that effective at taking away my rights.

As we as a society consider the issue of gun violence, these implications for American freedom also need to become part of the conversation. In particular, those who support expansive gun rights as a protection against excessive government power should strongly consider how much government intrusion and expanded power they’re willing to trade for those rights.

Bad people abuse rights so good people have to have them taken away.

Any more rights that get abused by a minority of people what I should give up.

Maybe the ALCU things I shouldn’t have privacy rights because some people have child porn on their hard drives or traffic drugs in their cars.

The ALCU has gone so far off the deep end they are arguing that to expand civil liberties we have to take civil liberties away from law abiding citizens.

These people have lost all credibility on the topic of civil rights, guns or otherwise.