Are you ready to relinquish your Second Amendment rights yet?
Police in Boston and Washington, DC, have been soliciting “voluntary†compliance with gun control. The plan: go house to house searching for weapons.
Many residents are resisting.
In DC the disarmament drive is particularly gauche, since Washington’s handgun ban was recently overturned in federal court. The city has appealed the decision, now being mulled over in the U.S. Supreme Court. At the time of the lower court’s decision, DC resident Tom Palmer told MSNBC: “The fact is that the criminals don’t obey the law and they do have guns.†He noted that it’s law-abiding citizens who get disarmed by such laws.
This is the first time in 70 years that the Supreme Court is considering whether the Second Amendment’s statement that the right to keep and bear arms “shall not be infringed†means what it says. Let’s just hope the justices’ reading skills are up to par.
Boston and DC activists have been alerting citizens of their right not to let the police enter their homes without a warrant. The education effort is reasonable.
Police officers may formally ask permission to enter. But their unexpected appearance on one’s doorstep can be intimidating. People don’t always have the presence of mind to assert their rights in such a situation — rights they possess even when governments decline to recognize them.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.