The Second Amendment didn’t create the right to keep and bear arms. It simply preserves it from the government trying to take it away. They’ve winnowed it down plenty, unfortunately, but they can’t take it all the way and everyone knows it.
That’s great, even if there’s still a whole lot of room for improvement.
But a lot of people look to European gun laws with fondness. See, over there, guns are treated as a privilege, not a right. As a result, the state can do whatever they want, and Germany did just that when the revoked the gun licenses of three men for their involvement in a right-wing, populist political party.
They tried to get them back, but it didn’t happen, and this is why (in German but translated by Google):
The Magdeburg Administrative Court has dismissed the lawsuits of two AfD members and a former member against the revocation of their firearms permits. The court stated that the plaintiffs lacked legal standing under firearms law because they were AfD members or had supported the party. The AfD in Saxony-Anhalt is an organization that operates against the constitutional order in Germany.
The background to this is the classification of the state association as confirmed right-wing extremist by the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution . The administrative court’s decisions are not yet legally binding.
For the AfD members’ lawsuit to be successful, the court found, it would have been necessary for “the individual member or supporter to persistently distance themselves from the behavior and statements of other members that characterized the AfD Saxony-Anhalt’s conduct.” However, the court stated that this was not evident in the plaintiffs’ case: “The fact that the plaintiffs had held firearms permits for years without attracting any attention under firearms law is not sufficient to assume the existence of an exception to the general presumption.”
Now, AfD is “Alternative for Germany,” translated into English, of course. This is a party that opposes the influx of Islamic immigrants that are poised to shift German demographics in the coming years, and they’re not overly popular with many left-leaning political types over that way.
Hence, stripping gun licenses from people who are members of that party.
I get that Germany is very prone to react toward anyone who seems interested in rebuilding anything akin to the Nazi party, but AfD isn’t some neo-Nazi group existing purely on the fringes of society. They’re an actual political party with seats in the federal parliament, the European parliament, and all but two state parliaments.
This is a party that has gotten votes, represents people in the legislative body of the state, nation, and international authorities, yet membership in it is enough to justify revoking someone’s license?
That’s insane.
Then again, Germany treats gun ownership as a privilege; one they can strip on a whim and for pretty much any manufactured reason they want. That apparently includes a minority political party that has enough support to seat people in their parliaments, but isn’t popular enough with the governing authority.
Now, let’s think about how that might work here.
How many people have decided that the Republican Party is racist or extremist? What about the Libertarian Party? What about the National Rifle Association, which New York Attorney General Letitia James once referred to as a terrorist organization? Do you think that anyone who had this kind of power over who can and cannot own guns wouldn’t use it against members of those groups at some point in time?
Note that one of the three isn’t even a member of AfD anymore. He just hasn’t distanced himself sufficiently from AfD, which means that just not renewing your membership in these entities wouldn’t necessarily be enough. You have to vocally denounce them in hopes that you won’t be viewed as the first one to stop clapping.
I honestly don’t care about AfD’s politics. I’m sure I disagree with at least some, if not most, of what they stand for.
It. Doesn’t. Matter.
The right to keep and bear arms is a right, not a privilege. That means it doesn’t just extend to those I agree with. People I disagree with on literally everything political, cultural, religious, and anything else still have that right. I maintain their right to keep and bear arms so that we don’t see this AfD nonsense play out here, and it starts to be turned on me and mine.
So I thank God and the Founding Fathers for the Second Amendment. I’m so glad we’re not having to deal with this, but I’m also cognizant of the fact that this is where we could easily head if many people got their way.
Read the full article here
