Reversal is urgent because the Second Circuit’s opinion threatens basic First Amendment rights at a time when the First Amendment is under widespread attack. [More]
That’s what happens when tyrants have conditioned themselves to ignore the Second Amendment with impunity.
[Via Michael G]
Government approved speech doesn’t need First Amendment protection any more than government approved firearms need Second Amendment protection. In that, SCOTUS was correct when they ruled that the Second Amendment protects a fundamental civil right just as much as the rest of the first 10 amendments do. But it follows that a career political class, who feel no connection whatsoever with possible consequences that might follow their flagrant disregard for those civil rights, would feel they can disregard the prohibitive language in the First Amendment just as they disregard similar prohibitions in the Second
They need to be reminded of a few once well known historical facts. One of those facts is that the Constitution of the United States protects that political class from the people just as much as it protects the people from the political class. Another is that during the time period when the Constitution was being debated, written, and ratified, the Federalists realized that if they did not agree to inclusion of language which protected hard won civil rights, they would not have the support needed to get the document ratified. No Federal level protection meant no ratification and no United States of America.
But perhaps more importantly, they need to be reminded of the following from the Declaration of Independence text.
“Prudence, indeed will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.”
In other words, political power does not come from any court, or from the halls of any legislature, or from the executive buildings of any government, or even from the offices of the entrenched bureaucracy. Political power comes from the approval of the American people.
Those who depend on that approval are closer to losing it than at any time since the 1860s.
Wake me up when the ‘Weapons Free’ order is given…