A pair of Left-wing Democrats in New York want to use the power of government to deny state residents the right to keep and bear arms for what they post on social media.
According to multiple reports, Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams and state Sen. Kevin Palmer are proposing legislation that gives authorities (police) the power to review three years’ worth of social media history and a year’s worth of Internet search history before allowing anyone who lives in the state to buy a gun.
“A three-year review of a social media profile would give an easy profile of a person who is not suitable to hold and possess a firearm,” said Adams, as reported by WCBS.
The radio station also reported that police would be looking for any “hate speech” posted on a potential gun buyer’s profile.
“If the police department is reviewing a gang assault, a robbery, some type of shooting, they go and do a social media profile investigation,” Adams further stated.
Sure. But that’s after they commit a crime.
We’re talking about buying a gun, which used to be a constitutionally protected right.
Notes WCBS:
There are some logistical concerns as free speech and gun rights complaints are likely to come up. Though, Adams and Palmer say it is doable and needed.
Translation: ‘We don’t care about your Second Amendment rights or your First Amendment rights. We hate guns so this is what we need to do.’
There are so many problems with this massive power grab it’s hard to know where to start.
‘Straight flush of Bill of Rights violations'
Let’s begin with the constitutional issues. There is nothing in the Second Amendment requiring or permitting governments to preface the sale of a firearm on a person’s speech. Similarly, there is nothing in the First Amendment that gives government the authority to preface gun sales on what an American citizen says in any forum.
There is also the notion of what does and does not constitute “hate speech.” To the Left, ‘hate speech’ is always designed as speech liberal regressives simply do not like or approve of. It doesn’t have to be speech that disparages someone because of their skin color, religion, socioeconomic status, or demographic — though our founders clearly had such speech in mind when they wrote an amendment designed to protect even speech that many deem undesirable.
And what about Adams’ comment about who is and is not “suitable” to own a gun? Is he kidding?
Who is he or any other elected official from any party to decide who makes a ‘suitable’ gun owner in a country where the “right to keep and bear arms” isn’t supposed to be “infringed?” Especially over something they write on Facebook or Twitter? (Related: Shooting sports group considering class-action lawsuit against Google for discrimination over Adwords/Adsense ban against firearms companies.)
“The only way to make this proposal better – by which I mean worse – would be to arrange for New York to quarter troops on the homes of applicants with especially bad social media postings. That way the sponsors could achieve a straight flush of Bill of Rights violations,” writes Walter Olson at the CATO Institute — the First, Second, Third, Fourth, and Fifth Amendments.
That this proposal comes from Democrats isn’t surprising. That they are residents of the deep blue state of New York isn’t, either, or that libs still favor authoritarianism over freedom and liberty.
What’s telling, however, is that they are willing to use the force of government to alter speech while denying citizens a basic, fundamental right of self-defense.
All because they’ve been deemed unsuitable.
Here’s a prediction: This bill never makes it into law, but if it does, expect to see a whole bunch of New York residents delete all of their social media accounts.
The titans of tech, anti-gunners themselves, wouldn’t have a problem with that — would they?
Read more about Left-wing Democrat authoritarianism at Libtards.news.
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