"Yet today I am labeled a “gun control collaborator,” a “Bloomberg supporter” and a “modern-day Benedict Arnold”—not to mention a “decrepit, mentally defunct self-important old fart.” And on Nov. 6, 2013, my 37-year career as a firearms journalist came to an abrupt end.
Why? Because I wrote an 800-word column for Guns & Ammo magazine exploring the distinction between regulation and infringement as it applies to constitutional rights. As discussions of the Second Amendment go, the column was innocuous. I did not call for any new regulations, but merely noted the Second Amendment was already regulated and that such regulations had been validated even in recent Supreme Court and federal appeals court rulings affirming an individual’s right to keep and bear arms. “Way too many gun owners seem to believe any regulation of the right to keep and bear arms is an infringement,” I wrote. “The fact is, all constitutional rights are regulated, always have been, and need to be.”
Other heresies on my part? I wrote that I personally had no problem with state laws requiring training for those seeking licenses to carry a concealed weapon and that I did not consider training requirements in and of themselves to be an infringement on my rights (though I’d like it to be good training). I mentioned the 16-hour training mandate in Illinois’s recently enacted concealed-carry statute and said that in spite of the time it requires, I much preferred to carry a firearm for defense legally than carry one illegally and risk prison. What I did not go so far as to say (though I now wish I had) was that compared to the previous Illinois law completely banning concealed carry, I viewed the new law not as an infringement but as a liberation. A first step.
http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/01/guns-second-amendment-target-me-102133.html?hp=t1_3#.UtVGYJ55PAx
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