After Charlottesville, the First and Second Amendments Are Under Fire

[Smokepole]

After Charlottesville, the First and Second Amendments Are Under Fire

By David French
National Review
August 18th. 2017

The ACLU retreats from defending the rights of protesters who legally carry guns.

A very strange thing has happened since last weekend’s dreadful violence in Charlottesville. White supremacists used virtually every form of weapon except guns, yet somehow the Second Amendment is now under fire. Even worse, those who lawfully exercise the right to keep and bear arms now have fewer defenders when they also choose to speak.

It started with Virginia governor Terry McAuliffe. In remarks that were oddly enough edited out of a New York Times article, McAuliffe claimed that “80 percent of the people here had semiautomatic weapons.” He further asserted that militia members “had better equipment than our state police.” He also said that white supremacists had weapons “stashed around the city.”

The Virginia state police disputed the governor’s claims, stating that they’d specifically looked for weapons stashes and “no weapons were located.” Further, they assured the public that they were not outgunned by militias. A spokesperson said the police “were equipped with more-than-adequate specialized tactical and protective gear for the purpose of fulfilling their duties” to protect the people present at the protests.

No matter. Claims that gun-toting militia members had somehow “chilled” free speech rocketed around the Web. Yet who, exactly, was deterred from speaking last weekend? Not only were people “speaking,” they were shrieking, chanting, yelling, and arguing. Few were deterred even from brawling. Powered by Then, yesterday, a more significant shoe dropped. The Wall Street Journal reported that the American Civil Liberties Union “will no longer defend hate groups seeking to march with firearms.” In other words, the group’s anti-gun stance is now directly influencing its First Amendment advocacy.

[counterpoint]

Ah, the old "you have the right to free speech, unless you are exercising the right to bear arms at the same time" ploy. Too much freedom, eh? You can only exercise one right at a time, apparently. Ha! Let me tell you, because I've scanned what people have been saying on social media, that the left absolutely does not believe in free speech whatsoever. They very much do want government to forbid certain kinds of speech like that of the recent protests. They have that "no place for hate speech in America" attitude while not understand the slippery slope that would eventually lead to a suppression of their own speech.