An Open Letter to my Gun-Advocating Friends & Family: Is the Second Amendment Really More Important than the First Amendment?

Dear Friend / Family Member,

I get it. You love guns. You grew up around them. You use them responsibly … or at least you think you do … or you know you don’t but you won’t admit that publicly and think it’ll never be a problem. I respect that you like shooting things. I understand that you’ve never killed anyone yourself. You don’t think you should be punished for other people’s actions.

And I know you have an inalienable second amendment right to own any gun you want.

via wikipedia

But, here’s my question to you: is your Second Amendment right to own a gun more fundamental or absolute than your First Amendment right to free speech?  Just a quick reminder, this is our first amendment:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

Free speech is the right to both say and not say things, and that language seems to be pretty absolutist. At its extreme it would mean that you could not be forced to say anything against your will, and that you can say anything you wish. That’s what an unlimited right to free speech looks like.

So, if you think your Second Amendment right is absolute, I dare you to walk into a crowded shopping mall and yell one of these three things:

A)  There’s a crazy person with a chainsaw coming to kill you! 

B) [Your boss / your neighbor / your ex-girlfriend or ex-boyfriend] is a child-raping pedophile!

C) That guy over there is a racist! Kill him!

Actually, I don’t dare you to do that because if you do, there will be legal repercussions.

While we seem to have absolutist language in the First Amendment, we recognize – and have always recognized – that there are inherent limitations.

People are forced to tell you stuff all the time. Particularly when it relates to things that impact your life and health.

You know that bottle of coke / diet coke / pepsi / whatever else you drank today? Did you turn it over to see where the ingredients section was? They didn’t do that voluntarily. It’s required. Despite their free speech right to not tell you stuff.

Same with those disclaimers at the end of the Viagra commercials you watch every day (or would if you watched normal TV and not Netflix).

And those health and safety notices at your work.

When you buy a new car, the company has to tell you the miles per gallon [of petrol, for non-Americans] you get on that car. When they lie, it’s fraud and a serious legal issue.

I can’t give you my car and say “Don’t worry, the brakes are fine” when I know that they aren’t fine. When you’re injured, I’ll probably be in jail and you’ll get to sue me (but I’ll be in jail, so I won’t be able to pay so good luck with that).

People are also forced to not say stuff all the time.

Wouldn’t it suck if I went into your work and told everyone you were a child molester?  It would suck even if it’s true, but it sucks extra when it’s not true. And luckily for you, it’s not protected speech. Because my First Amendment right to say anything I want doesn’t include the right to defame you.

I’m not allowed to go on television at 6:00pm and say “fuck fuck fuckity fuck fuck fuck.” We have restrictions on that and I’d have to pay a fine.

I can’t tell you that the carrot juice from my garden will cure your cancer or herpes or common cold for the low, low price of just $19.99 a bottle.

If I produce mouth wash, I can tell you “this is the best mouthwash in the world,” but I can’t tell you “Using this mouthwash is just as good as flossing.”

As a lawyer, I’m not allowed to tell my clients’ secrets. As a military officer, my sister isn’t allowed to disclose the nation’s.

I’m not allowed to pass on instructions between two criminals for the purpose of helping them plan or carry out or escape from a crime.

I don’t get to walk into a theatre – or a gay nightclub – and yell “fire!” unless there’s actually a fire and I’m trying to get people to evacuate. Because the misuse of my words in a public place presents a threat to public health and safety, so we restrict the absolute nature of that right.

And while I might be allowed to be an ignorant racist (hi, Donald), I’m not allowed to say things that are likely to incite imminent violence. So I can’t stand on a street and say “That’s Donald Trump! He’s a racist! Everyone go kill him!”  That’s incitement to violence. And when it’s against a presidential candidate (seriously… why did you people let that happen?), then it’s a particular kind of crime whereby the Secret Service picks me up. I don’t get to do that because it puts Donald’s life in danger, and no matter how much I look forward to his demise, I’m not allowed to use or instigate violence for the purpose of bringing that demise about (and, of course, I only seek his political demise, not his death.).

In spite of all those restrictions, we still enjoy a robust right to free speech (unless you’re a Washington Post reporter trying to cover DonaldTrump, and then you enjoy a slightly more restricted right to free speech because, after all, why would a presidential candidate be expected to allow people to cover him, even negatively in an constitutional democracy?).  We have allowed those reasonable restrictions to develop without falling into the abyss of authoritarianism.

How do I know this? Because you compared Obama to Hitler. You don’t get to do that in authoritarian regimes. Just ask my friends who live in places like ISIS-controlled Syria,* North Korea,** Egypt and Myanmar and Equatorial Guinea*** and the Gambia.***

*Actually, don’t ask them. For starters, because of how communication systems are set up right now, they can’t answer you, but also just sending them the question is likely to get them into trouble.

**You’re right – I don’t have any friends in North Korea. Why? Because it’s a dictatorial regime and no one inside is allowed to communicate with me.

***Again, don’t ask them for real. They have better modes of communication than ISIS-controlled Syria, but asking the question can get them into trouble.

While I focused on the First Amendment, the same is true of all the other rights.* Right to trial by a jury of your peers? Only in certain circumstances; and the number of people required to convict you, let alone how unanimous they must be, varies by state. Right to freedom from search and seizure?  Well, unless you go on an airplane or into a federal building, or if the police think there’s an emergency situation, etc.** 

*Except, possibly, the Third, but that’s never been tried and it’s a rather silly right to be discussing in today’s day and age.

** Please don’t make me go through every right to prove this point. It’s true. I can do it. It will waste my time but I can do it.

So, when you to tell me that it’s “unconstitutional” to put restrictions on your Second Amendment rights, I’m stuck with this question: why?  Why is it acceptable to have restrictions on literally every other right in the Bill of Rights but not on the Second Amendment? 

When did your right to own a gun – a machine principally designed to kill and destroy things – become more fundamental to you than your right to free speech, which, as every child knows won’t even break any bones?

Don’t say it’s because your Second Amendment secures the First. The inverse is true, too. Otherwise we wouldn’t be having this discussion and any public debate on this could be quashed simply by sending the military to pick up your guns. You do realize they can bring their tanks and airplanes and ships to do that, right?  Do you really think your AR-15 is going to stop a battalion of military members?*  So your First Amendment is pretty damn important.

*Also, can we talk about how insulting it is to the military to think they’d carry out such an order? They’ve already said they won’t follow unlawful orders no matter who gives it to them. Do you really so thoroughly distrust the people you claim to ‘support’ on your bumper stickers and honor every July 4th and November 11th? (No, you can’t distrust the guys you honour in May; they’re dead. Wrong holiday.)

I’m not arguing that we should take all the guns away. I’m saying that we should have legitimate regulations about who can buy what kind of a gun, when, and how. I’m saying that the AR-15 has been used in three terribly public mass shootings so we should ask why shooters are choosing that weapon and introduce reasonable restrictions that limit the effectiveness of that choice in those situations. I’m saying that a guy on a terrorist watch list shouldn’t be able to walk into a shop and buy a gun without first challenging his designation before a court to justify his removal from the watch list.

Now, I know you’re about to say, “but restrictions aren’t necessary because it’s not the guns; it’s the humans who operate them…” No shit, Sherlock. No one is saying that the guns get up and shoot people on their own. They are inanimate objects. But we put restrictions on all kinds of things because humans are too stupid or too psychopathic to use them properly and not endanger people‘s lives.

You know that meme you keep sharing about how McVeigh used fertilizer and therefore we don’t need gun control?  Remember how he used that fertilizer to blow up a federal building? Now, do you also remember how we introduced restrictions to the sale of fertilizer and also on who can access a federal building and how?  Because that happened. 

And you know how that same meme says the 9/11 terrorists used box cutters and planes?  Now, do you remember how we introduced new cock-pit doors and restricted what you can take on planes? 

Because that happened.

And remember how cars used to be horribly bad and we introduced seatbelt restrictions to stop people from dying?  Because that happened.

Usually, when there’s a causal connection to human misuse and death, we act.  It won’t eliminate all violence or all murder, but it will reduce them. And if it saves even 1 life, or 5 lives, or 50 lives… isn’t that worth some minor inconveniences?

That brings me to the thing I don’t really understand about your position. You often say things like “it’s not the guns’ fault,” as if the gun has feelings that justify not “punishing it.” You do know they don’t have feelings, right?  You need to know that because the reality is that the people the guns shoot do have feelings. As do their family members. And their friends. A gun never only wounds a single person; it always harms entire groups of people. And those people have feelings and shouldn’t be asked to suffer. Your gun has no feelings and won’t suffer one bit if we limit who can play with it because it’s unsafe.

Now, I know you want to say that “it’s the gun free zones that are the problem. They draw the shooters to them.” But, you know what’s a gun-free zone?  Airports. Airports are gun-free zones. Like many schools and churches, the only people allowed to have guns in airports are the police and military. And even then, there’s relatively few of them. Do you know how unusual it is to have a shooting at an airport? 

They happen, but – given the scale of gun violence in the US – they are rare. Between 2001 and 2013, I could only find 9 documented cases of shootings at airports, compiled helpfully by NBC Los Angeles after and LAX shooting, only 5 of them involved active shooters in the US. One was in Germany, one was in Honduras, and the final two instances involve police shooting people for dangerous, but not gun-related, actions (a guy claiming to have a bomb and a guy who rammed police cars).

You know why that gun-free zone remains gun-free for the most part?  It’s not because the shooters are afraid of the long lines. It’s because it’s not a convenient place for shooters to go. 

Mass shootings happen in people’s neighborhoods and areas that the shooter knows. They happen in gun-free zones because those gun-free zones happen to be where lots of people tend to gather. Things like churches and schools are easy targets not because they’re gun free – let’s be clear half these assholes are prepared to die as soon as they start shooting. They just want to take out as many people as they can first. So they go to places in their neighborhood where lots of people gather, like churches and schools.

Columbine High School had an armed guard, but when two teenagers* wanted to shoot a bunch of people, they went to the place in their neighborhood where their classmates gathered. The San Bernadino shooters wanted to kill a bunch of people so they went to a work event where they knew a bunch of people were gathered. The Aurora movie shooter wanted to kill a bunch of people, so he went to a theatre near his home where he knew a bunch of people would be gathered. And the Orlando shooter, with what seems to clearly be an issue of self-hatred because of his own attraction to men, chose a club he frequented where he knew that Latin night was in full swing. That club had an off-duty police officer as an armed guard.

*I intentionally chose not to name any of the shooters as glory was often a part of their motivation.

The common theme there isn’t “gun free zones.” It’s “close and with a lot of people, easy access, and easy to do damage with.”    

People shoot where they live. That includes those who commit suicide, those who kill their spouses or children, and those who go to their neighborhood school or club or church.

I know you think more guns = greater safety. Statistically, that’s not true. No, seriously – statistically, that’s not true.  Also, studies show that if you aren’t training specifically to engage in active-shooter situations, you won’t actually be able to respond in a helpful way to active-shooter situations. Watch the video I first found under point 2 of this article.  Then, read the article.

I’m not making this up.  Guns don’t increase your safety. And you won’t be the one exception to the rule in that active-shooter situation unless you’re actually a police officer or a veteran with extensive real world experience.

So, in conclusion: yes, you have a right to guns. No, it is not an unlimited right unless somehow you think the Second Amendment got extra super special constitutional protection that none of the rest of the Bill of Rights enjoys (and let’s be clear: nothing in the text of the Constitution suggests that is the case). There can constitutionally be reasonable restrictions and there’s no reason to believe – based on the interpretation of and reaction to literally every other Constitutional amendment – that those reasonable restrictions are “just the start” of taking away all you guns. 

Now, finally: you often say you need a gun to “protect your family,” and that your right to conceal carried weapons in public is an extension of that. But do you realize that your insistence on a right to have unimpeded absolute access to guns is the reason the Orlando shooter could get his?  I know that case is complex, but in the end, it shows that you that by so ferociously protecting you right to own a gun that you probably won’t be able to shoot in an emergency active-shooter situation, that you are securing the right of every other person in the US gets unimpeded access to a weapon, regardless of how good they are at using it. So you might trust yourself, but do you really trust everyone else? Do you trust them with your life? With your child’s?

You might think you need a gun to protect your family, but unless you are with them 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, with your gun holstered and the training necessary to respond in an active shooter situation – unless all those elements are present – by blocking reasonable gun reform, you are essentially saying you trust your life, and that of your child’s, to every other person in the US who wants to own a gun and may not be able or willing to use it responsibly. To every sexually- and politically-confused man hell-bent on making a name for himself while shouting an allegiance to ISIS or the KKK. To every other person in the US who puts their gun in their purse and then accidentally fires through it (and, of course, in that situation your gun offers no protection to your child whatsoever). To every man who feels spurned by your daughter’s refusal to have sex with him. To every guy on the street feeling a little too in need of extra cash or a little too desirous of your son’s shoes. To the man so unable to control his temper that he’ll kill someone over seating arrangements at church or over his right to a parking space.   

You are trusting each of those people – each of those groups of people – with your child’s life. You are doing this so that you can enjoy your Second Amendment right in an absolutist way that exceeds you enjoyment of any other right. 

If that’s the choice you are making, you need to be honest about it. You need to accept that you are privileging your Second Amendment right over both you First Amendment right and your child’s security when she or he is out in the world without you. Otherwise, it’s time you join the call for reasonable gun reform.

With appreciation to Michael Hackfort and Ebba for helpful comments and suggestions.