Re-framing the Second Amendment Debate.....

If firearm owners and the organizations that represent them hope to win the debate regarding the Second Amendment right to bear arms, then the entire debate must be re-framed.


For far too long, this debate has been framed by those who oppose a constructionist view of the Second Amendment solely in legal terms.  Therein lies the problem.  As any debater can tell you, the first axiom of debate is that the side that frames the debate ultimately wins the debate. 


As was true of the fight to secure the right of minorities to vote, among other social issues, we will only truly make ground when we come to realize that the Second Amendment expresses a human right.  The Bill of Rights is entirely about human rights, those rights that were recognized by the States as having been bestowed upon humans by God Himself. The Bill of Rights was added to the Constitution because, as originally written, the Constitution, masterpiece that it is, failed to provide protections for these most basic rights.  It was for this reason, to insure that the Constitution did not create yet another all-powerful centralized government that had no regard for the inherent rights of its citizens, that the Bill of Rights was created in the first place.  Before the right to bear arms is a legal right, it is first a human right.


This recognition will change the complexion of the debate that surrounds current treatments of the Second Amendment. The sooner firearm owners and the organizations that represent them come to terms with this realization, the sooner we will begin to re-frame this debate in terms of a basic human right, and the sooner we will be able to establish a firmer legal foundation for our right to self-defense and the accompanying right to bear arms as expressed in the Second Amendment.

Why Businesses Must Recognize the Individual's Right to Carry.....

At some level, I have always known this to be true, but the recent situation with Frank Eckl, a disabled veteran who was denied his civil and legal right to be accompanied into the eating area of a Grand Rapids, MI, area restaurant by his service dog, Spruce, brought this issue into clearer focus.  You see, our right to self-defense is as much a civil right as is our right to be accompanied into a business by a service animal, or the right of minorities and women to have access to privately-owned businesses and clubs.  It is as critical a civil right as our rights of speech, religion, association, press - all of the rights protected under the Bill of Rights, which are all summed up as our right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.  The fact that self-defense - at any place and any time - is a civil right has gotten lost in the emotional arguments advanced by those who would selectively determine which rights they choose to allow us to exercise.  The laws exist to protect those rights, and they are CIVIL rights before they are LEGAL rights.

So when we make the argument that we cannot legally mandate that an owner of a privately-owned business/manufacturing facility/place of commerce or employment allow someone who is exercising their right to self-defense access to their property while carrying on their person the means to protect that right, the argument doesn't hold up.  We have hundreds of laws, both state and federal, that override those private property rights, especially when the private property is a business/manufacturing facility/place of commerce or employment, to insure that the civil rights of patrons and employees are recognized and protected.  Our laws tell the owners of these private properties that they must admit service animals; they must admit minorities; they must build their properties in such a way as to accommodate the rights of the disabled to have full access to their private property, including the kinds of bathroom fixtures they must provide, the width of doorways, or the number of parking places that are reserved for their exclusive use - just to give a few examples.  These laws not only tell them what they may or may not do on their privately-owned property, they also require them to make such provisions at their own expense and subject them to legal penalties if they fail to make such provisions.

So why must the owners of such privately-held properties be required to allow a citizen carrying their legally-owned sidearm onto their property?  Because civil rights are our God-given, natural rights, and the law does not allow them to pick and choose which civil rights they will allow to be exercised.