The Second Amendment enshrines one of our most important rights. It’s very clear that our Founding Fathers wanted that right protected from any intrusion as well.
The amendment exists as an insurance policy for our republic.
Yet many don’t value it at all, including a number of CEOs, as we’ve noted previously. One of those CEOs is speaking up and claiming the Second Amendment is really just an excuse.
The recent wave of mass shootings across the country has renewed partisan debates over gun control and the scope of the Second Amendment, which reads: “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”
Edelman CEO Richard Edelman was one of 200 U.S. CEOs recently signed a letter demanding that Congress take action on gun safety in the form of new legislation.
“This is 10 years after Sandy Hook, and status quo just won’t do,” Edelman recently said on Yahoo Finance Live (video above). “Somehow, falling back on the rights of citizens to bear arms is just kind of an excuse for delaying what is inevitably in the interests of the communities.”
…
Edelman stressed that he and his fellow chief executives are not seeking to ban all weapons.
“To be clear, what [the letter] said was nothing specific,” Edelman said. “We want something like a red flag law, or we want some limitation on age, or we want something that limits high-capacity ammunition — all of these should be on the table. It’s up to Congress to make the specifics. But we need gun safety.”
He added that “I believe in the Second Amendment, but I want to be sure that guns are used appropriately.”
Except, saying that the Second Amendment is an excuse suggests that he believes no such thing.
Edelman is the CEO of a PR firm. This is important because public relations relies heavily on the First Amendment.
Yet Edelman is blithely arguing for restrictions on the Second Amendment, not understanding that infringements to one right invariably lead to justifications for infringements on other rights. How long before his company is facing restrictions justified by his support for gun control?
The truth of the matter is that there are solutions to these kinds of horrific events that have nothing to do with gun control. We’ve seen them work in numerous places and they can be used again.
We also need to start looking at why mass shootings happen so often here in the US on a per capita basis compared to many other nations, many awash in illegal guns despite strict gun control measures.
All of that can be done without infringing on the Second Amendment, but that’s not what people like Edelman are demanding.
Sure, he says he wants a few relatively minor gun laws, but what about when those fail to stop the violence? What will he support next? How much of our Second Amendment right is he willing to bargain away for the false promise of safety?
That’s the question he needs to answer, but will never be asked by the mainstream media.