On August 21st, David Sirota, a progressive columnist, wrote an article suggesting that freedom of speech (the first amendment) is under direct attack by the second amendment (the right to bear arms).  It’s an eloquent piece that contains sparse facts and even more-sparse logic.  He references Congressional forum where someone showed up with a gun and an Obama Health Care event where protesters used their weapons in a youTube video threat.

The events he’s listed are in direct contradiction to the premise of the article.  David is attempting to show that one right should not quash another and I agree with that premise.  He destroys that strong argument by instead talking about how his right should quash that of gun owners.  This is a terrible attempt to present a new approach to Supreme Court evaluations of the second amendment.  Sirota’s position that protecting the 2nd Amendment will destroy the 1st is preposterous.  The first amendment to the Constitution is no more in danger than the tenth due to our right to bear arms.  Having the right to keep and bear arms no more allows a person to bring a gun to a public event than it would a chainsaw or billy club.  Those of us that exercise our right to keep and bear arms are not doing it to endanger other citizen’s right to speak freely.  We are either sportsman, prefer to be prepared to defend our homes, or wish to protect our own rights as American citizens.

If people threaten others with guns, baseball bats, a knife or any other weapon when no threat is present to themselves, they should be arrested and tried.  The same should happen to anyone that uses speech to cause harm to another such as the famous “yelling fire in a crowded theater” example.  Having a right does not give us the right to restrict the rights of others with it.  Once one person’s rights hinder the freedoms of another, the judicial system should be brought in to help draw the line.

This has nothing to do with free speech and everything to do with another tactic to strip individual freedoms from others.  No one is preventing liberals from speaking their minds and the only ones fearing the loss of rights are the one’s now being criticized for having exercised one of theirs.

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