When a government is suppressing rights (think Russia or Turkey now), the first rights to go are those of speech, the press and peaceful assembly. When crackdowns on the rights occur, they impact all citizens. Whether you own a gun or not, you will be impact when the government restricts without reason what you can say, what you can write, and where you can go. And no matter how many guns you have, you will not be a match for government forces.<\/p>\n

For most of us, there would be virtually no changes in our lives (except increased safety) if gun rights were restricted. But virtually all of us would feel even the slightest impact from restrictions on those rights guaranteed in the First Amendment.<\/p>\n

I might be more inclined to listen more carefully to the arguments of Second Amendment proponents if (1) I felt that they valued some of the other rights outlined in the Bill of Rights, and (2) if they seemed to understand that no rights are absolute; they all involve trade-offs.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

If you watch enough news, if you listen to enough talk-radio, if you even read mainstream press, you might think that the only part<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2119,1988,255,1683,1656,1477,2233],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"\n