Michigan: Let's ban open carry

October 24, 2020

We don't have to put up with this "open carry" crap. The people of Michigan decide what is proper, civilized behavior in this state and we can ban behavior that is not. Public open carry should be outlawed, with exceptions for hunters and gun ranges. Carrying a concealed weapon would still be allowed with a license. Our message to people who insist on carrying guns: Keep it in your pants, please.

There is no justification for open carry. Yes, people ought to have the right to do anything they want as long as it is not hurting anyone. But parading around in public with a huge automatic rifle is frightening to many people, especially women, children and people of color. These guns have no purpose other than to kill people and they've been used to kill many innocent, non-suspecting civilians over the years. Several of the men carrying weapons at demonstrations at the Capitol this summer were at the time planning to kidnap and kill Governor Whitmer, storm the building and kill police. (source)

If the Republican-controlled Legislature doesn't do it, we can either launch a petition drive or wait until after the 2022 election, when the new Citizens Redistricting Commission will have put an end to gerrymandering and Democrats will be in control of both houses.

If open carry is banned, it will be challenged in the courts. Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson's ban on guns at polling places is already being challenged by three gun groups. They “represent many thousands of members who choose to openly carry firearms into polling places on Election Day as a means of pronouncing their viewpoint on the Second Amendment,” their attorneys say, according to Bridge magazine:

The suit claims it is “common practice” for open carry advocates who take their weapons to the polls on Election Day to affix an “I voted” sticker to their holster, and then take a photo to post on social media.

That’s a “form of political expression and viewpoint-based speech” that is also protected by the Constitution, attorneys argued.

I just don't think a gun is necessary to express one's political views.

The U.S. Supreme Court has interpreted the Second Amendment to apply to individual gun owners. In his 2008 majority opinion in District of Columbia v Heller, Justice Antonin Scalia said, "There seems to us no doubt, on the basis of both text and history, that the Second Amendment conferred an individual right to keep and bear arms." He goes on to say, "Of course, we do not read the Second Amendment to protect the right of citizens to carry arms for any sort of confrontation, just as we do not read the First Amendment to protect the right of citizens to speak for any purpose." Just as you cannot yell "FIRE" in a crowded theater, you should not be able to brandish a lethal weapon in public. Scalia recognized the need for restrictions:

[N]othing in our opinion should be taken to cast doubt on longstanding prohibitions on the possession of firearms by felons and the mentally ill, or laws forbidding the carrying of firearms in sensitive places such as schools and government buildings [emphasis mine], or laws imposing conditions and qualifications on the commercial sale of arms.

Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Joseph J. Ellis believes the decision in District of Columbia v Heller was dead wrong. He addresses it in his book American Dialogue: The Founders and Us. Scalia fancied himself an "originalist" which means "the true meaning of the Constitution. . .reside[s] in the original intentions of the framers." Yet the amendment makes no mention of individual rights:

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.

As Justice John Paul Stevens said in his dissent, "The Second Amendment was adopted to protect the right of the people of each of the several states to maintain a well-regulated militia."

It was in response to concerns raised during the ratification of the Constitution that the power of Congress to disarm the state militias and create a national standing army posed an intolerable threat to the sovereignty of the several states. Neither the text of the Amendment nor the arguments advanced by its proponents evidenced the slightest interest in limiting any legislature's authority to regulate private civilian uses of firearms. Specifically, there is no indication that the Framers of the Amendment intended to enshrine the common-law right of self-defense in the Constitution.

As an originalist, Scalia was - in this case - a fraud.

As we add another professed originalist to the Court - new justice Amy Coney Barrett - we can only hope that she is true to her beliefs, and if the issue is ever reconsidered, she will find that the Second Amendment in no way confers an individual right to keep and bear arms.

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