We recently reported that the County of San Francisco will be introducing new legislation to, among other things, “require the videotaping of all gun and ammunition sales within San Francisco, and require the regular storage and electronic transmission of ammunition sales data to the San Francisco Police Department.”
Anti-gun politicians are often quoted as supporting “civil rights.” But their support of civil rights seems to be limited to only those rights they like (or make up), conveniently ignoring the rest of the [written] Constitution.
How do you think these same legislators would feel about measures that restrict abortion, book sales, or speech in the same way that law-abiding people are bullied, hassled, and forced into government-mandated invasions of privacy just to exercise their fundamental, individual Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms?
So, have some fun with a new civil rights game. The next time you read a news story about a gun control proposal, replace “firearm” with “abortion,” and “ammunition” with “contraceptive” (adapted as necessary for context).
Here’s one example of the game in practice, this from the news report on the latest San Francisco gun control proposal:
“Supervisor Mark Farrell is set to put in a public request at today’s San Francisco Board of Supervisors meeting to begin drafting legislation that would require the videotaping of all [abortions] within San Francisco, and require the regular storage and electronic transmission of [contraceptive] sales data to the San Francisco Police Department….The package would also require any permittee who has the proper documentation to [perform abortions] to keep records of their [abortion] data for up to five-years, and electronically transmit the [abortion] data at least weekly to the SFPD. The SFPD would develop the forms and information that would need to be regularly transmitted to the department, and at a minimum will include:
(1) The date of the [abortion];
(2) The name, address and date of birth of the [abortion recipient];
(3) The number of the[abortion recipient’s] current driver’s license or other government issued identification card containing a photograph of the [abortion recipient], and the name of the governmental authority that issued it;
(4) The [age and sex of the aborted fetus];
(5) The [abortion recipient’s] signature; and
(6) The name of the permittee’s agent or employee who processed the [abortion].
Supervisor Farrell’s package of [abortion] control legislation is expected to be introduced formally at the Board of Supervisors when the Board returns from its recess in the beginning of September.”
You can also play this game with existing gun control laws and use other substitute words like “Bible” and “Koran.”
If America is ever to be truly free, we can’t cherry-pick our civil rights–protecting the ones we like while restricting those we don’t. The alternative is that government will get to pick and choose for us.
Which might be fine with you…until it’s your civil right ox that’s being gored.
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