These are heady days for 2nd Amendment fans. Under a new federal law that took effect yesterday, when you're packing for a trip to a national park, you can include heat:
Visitors now can pack heat in any national park from Gates of the Arctic to Everglades, provided they comply with the firearms laws of the park's home state, according to the new law that was passed as an amendment to credit-card legislation.
In Indiana, legislation to close the state's gun permit database to public access was the first bill to pass both houses of the legislature and head for the governor's desk. And differing versions of the bill to allow employees to keep guns in their locked vehicles while at work have passed in both houses and await conference committee negtotiations.
Reason magazine's Brian Doherty notes recent trends and concludes that guns are "not just for the home anymore."
Thus, if the right to defend yourself against assault should be honored by the U.S. government, there is little reasonable justification for restricting that right to only the home. And there is no civilized right more basic than self-defense; indeed, to make such defense more efficient and wide-ranging is one of the only legitimate reasons for government at all, thus making localities' attempts to bar its citizens from practicing the right effectively particularly pernicious.
His point underscores a contradiction not usually noted about the gun-control arguments. Any reason you could give for banning guns in certain settings -- e.g., schools, churches, national parks -- could be given for banning guns in any setting. It is either constitutionally and legally valid to carry a gun or it isn't. Period.
