Guns: Shooting Straight
Today's touché comes from a reader who raises a question about guns.
The Virginia Citizens Defense League recently handed out stickers at the Richmond Coliseum prior to an appearance by talk-show sensation Glenn Beck; "Guns Save Lives," the stickers read. Coliseum personnel asked the VCDLers to stop handing them out -- an affront to the First Amendment if ever there was one.
We support the Second Amendment as much as we do the First. We cheered the Supreme Court's ruling in Heller upholding an individual right to bear arms. We agree that guns cause crime to the same degree that flies cause garbage. But -- like the reader -- we wonder how well the notion that "guns save lives" squares with that other well-known gun-rights motto: "Guns don't kill, people do."
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Though I’m not a member of Virginia Citizen’s Defense League, I
can suggest at least one reason for that phrasing. Unlike the case when
a criminal uses a gun to kill someone, the mere presence of a firearm can
prevent or interrupt a crime. I have personal experience of this. In the
seventies, I had a handgun with a problem. I unloaded it, holstered it, and took it to a local gunsmith to be fixed. I was on a bicycle, and along the way I was harassed and threatened by a three drunken idiots. After forcing me off the road, they started to get out of the car to beat me up. It was only when I turned so that they could see the handgun that they gave up and ran away.
We know that guns in the hands of law-abiding citizens save lives.
To cite only two cases: In Colorado, a gunman starting shooting people
at the New Life Church, and was stopped only by a gun in the hands of a
civilian; likewise, at Appalachian School of Law right here in Virginia, a
mad gunman was stopped only by two armed citizens.
As to the matter of JMG employees censoring stickers, that is obviously unconstitutional and illegal. The Coloseum was paid for by our tax dollars, and is owned by the government. No contract with any private contractor to manage it can legally authorize the contractor to do anything which it would be illegal for the government itself to do.
To GuidoMcGinty,
The Coliseum is public property, not private property. So, it doesn’t make any difference who is ‘managing’ it, the First Amendment applies, and the SMG employees were in violation of the First Amendment in their suppression of those who were expressing themselves by wearing a sticker.
As to the question being posted here, I am in total agreement with Mr. VanCleave. We know that those who would disarm the citizens of this nation only fear those they can’t control, which is the whole purpose of the Second Amendment - to keep control of the government in the hands of the citizens. It is merely a diversionary tactic by these enemies of freedom when they make statements like “Guns Kill.“ These people can’t make a logical reason for disarming the nation, so they resort to a favorite tactic, fear. They conjure up images of rampant firearms roaming the streets, killing innocent bystanders at random. Fortunately, most folks have more sense than that. In the hands of good, decent, and law-abiding people, guns are indeed life-saving tools.
IIRC, it’s only an affront to the 1st amendment if the censor was a government employee. Since the arena is managed by SMG, I’m pretty sure that wasn’t the case.
As president of VCDL, I would like to address the question:
Unfortunately, you can’t put more than a few words on a sticker and expect anyone to be able to see those small letters. So stickers must have very short and succinct wording.
If the number of words weren’t limited, the sticker would have a preamble and read, “In the hands of good people, Guns Save Lives”
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