Only a couple of paragraphs into the 18-page federal complaint filed Thursday in U.S. District Court in Massachusetts against Gov. Charlie Baker is an important reminder to government officials who have been using the coronavirus pandemic to push their personal gun control agendas.
According to the lawsuit, filed by the Second Amendment Foundation, Firearms Policy Coalition, Commonwealth Second Amendment, Inc. (Comm2A) and several others:
“The exigencies surrounding this viral pandemic both justify and necessitate changes in the manner in which people live their lives and conduct their daily business. However, this emergency—like any other emergency—has its constitutional limits. It would not justify a prior restraint on speech, nor a suspension of the right to vote. Just the same, it does not justify a ban on obtaining guns and ammunition.”
That’s the same message Alan Gottlieb, chairman of the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms, has been sending since President Donald Trump declared an emergency last month.
“President Trump’s declaration of a national emergency doesn’t put our Constitution on hold,” Gottlieb said at the time, and he’s been repeating that ever since.
The federal lawsuit is just the latest court action involving SAF and other gun rights groups, and Gottlieb told Liberty Park Press more actions are likely to come soon.
As reported here Wednesday, the right to keep and bear arms may become increasingly important the longer the COVID-19 lockdown continues, as burglaries are beginning to skyrocket. These burglaries have involved lots of restaurants, but in Tacoma, Wash., the crime wave has taken a turn for the worse as someone attempted to burglarize a popular gun store overnight.
This incident only underscores another paragraph in the Massachusetts lawsuit.
“The need for personal self-defense is most acute during times of uncertainty and crisis,” the complaint says, “when law enforcement services may not be available or may not be reliably available, and when (as now) criminal offenders may be released from custody or may be less likely to be taken into custody in the first place. It is precisely times like these that the Plaintiffs and the Plaintiffs’ members need to be able to exercise their fundamental rights to keep and bear arms.”
In one of their continuing alarmist email blasts warning against keeping gun stores open during the coronavirus emergency, Michael Bloomberg’s Everytown for Gun Safety lobbying organization declares, “A flood of guns at this precarious moment of economic decline and social isolation compounds the risks of death and serious injury during this incredibly stressful time.”
If Everytown is concerned about a “flood of guns,” perhaps the group should have a conversation with the would-be Tacoma burglar who tried to relieve a gun store of its inventory.
While the country appears to be starting to recover a bit from the pandemic panic—Wall Street is showing some spunk—this situation is far from over, so concerns about personal and family safety, and the necessity of defending Second Amendment-protected rights, seem justified to lots of people who are still going to gun stores for firearms and ammunition.
Perhaps one reason the gun prohibition lobby does not want would-be gun owners to find open gun stores is because they will learn, as may already have, that gun control laws prevent them from just buying firearms off the shelf and walking out. There is much anecdotal evidence that at least some first-time gun buyers are having fits upon learning that guns are not as “easily accessible” as they have been led to believe.
If the pandemic panic has accomplished anything, it has been the reality check former non-gun owners have experienced when they attempted to buy a firearm only to find that gun control penalizes honest citizens, but really doesn’t prevent criminals from committing crimes.
