When efforts to seriously curtail the availability of guns are off the table, the will for reform gets channelled in more perverse directions, and more of our civil liberties are threatened
He can definitely tell a lie. Photo: Alex Wong/Getty Images When NRA zealots wish to explain why their taste in toys should take precedence over public safety, they will often argue that the freedom to own an AK-47 is the foundation on which all other civil liberties rest: An unarmed citizenry has no rights that the federal government is bound to respect.
Trump’s one feeble gesture toward gun regulation involved expanding the reach of “red flag” laws that empower law enforcement to confiscate the firearms of those whom they find to be dangerous or mentally ill. To buttress this “precrime” approach to gun control, the president endorsed an expansion of social media surveillance “to detect mass shooters before they strike.”
Trump’s answer to that puzzle Monday was a common one: To accommodate the inalienable right to bear assault rifles, Uncle Sam would have to ruthlessly sacrifice lesser civil liberties at the altar of public safety. As remedies for America’s gun violence problem, these proposals are laughable. If gruesome video games were a leading cause of gun violence in general — or mass shootings in particular — Japan would presumably be littered with blood and bullet casings. Instead, while America’s annual gun deaths are measured by the tens of thousands, Japan’s can typically be counted on two hands.
But the biggest problem with Trump’s proposals isn’t their inefficacy — a charge that can be fairly leveled at many liberal gun reforms. Rather, the problem is that Trump’s ideas subordinate civil liberties to the cause of security theater. In so doing, they demonstrate that the Second Amendment does not safeguard our other freedoms, so much as it undermines them.
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