Fringe elements of National Walkout must fail miserably

While I think most of us can feel good that notoriously apathetic teens (politically speaking, at least) are engaging civically in an issue that impacts us all, it’s incredibly important the fringe elements of their effort fail miserably.

Student walkout isn’t about leaving class

Students today will walk out of class in memory of the lives lost in Parkland, Florida, and to call for gun control.

We have some calling the NRA a terrorist organization. Those ignorant voices should be ignored. There are others calling for a ban on guns. Let us not ignore those voices; they should be defeated with haste.

We don’t give up constitutional rights because a group of kids — or adults — feel passionately that those rights shouldn’t exist. I’m grateful for that.

During an interview with CNN, one of the national student leaders, David Hogg, bemoaned the Second Amendment, complaining that other countries handle gun ownership better.

“If you look at all the other countries like Canada, like Sweden and so many others that are first-world countries and are places that have more developed gun laws … are more restrictive on gun ownership,” Hogg told CNN’s anti-gun anchor Alisyn Camerota. “You see it more as a privilege rather than a right. They allow people to own guns, just in a more controlled way and make sure they are still allowed to own them in a responsible and respective way. We want to make sure Americans can do that too. We just don’t think mentally deranged individuals, people under the age of 21 or anyone else that has like a criminal background, for example, should be able to get a weapon.”

First off, literally no one thinks mentally deranged people or criminals should have guns. People under 21? I’d wager 18 to 20-year-olds who hunt or use it for protection (particularly after being the victim of a violent crime) would disagree with Hogg.

But this idea that other countries handle guns differently is immaterial to this discussion because we have a constitutional right to bear arms and those countries do not. The Czech Republic moved to enshrine a constitutional right to bear arms; is Hogg a supporter of that? No. He has no respect for our constitutional right to own a gun.

And he gets that opinion. It’s informed by a tragedy he experienced. But demanding we walk away from the rights he happens to disagree with should alarm you. The Left bemoaned giving up rights of privacy in the name of national security, but now, because they’re ideologically anti-gun, they’re asking us to give up the right to bear arms.

Which rights are next? Imagine, for a moment, pro-gun folks trying to ban protests in favor of gun control laws. These kids — and adults — would be rightfully up in arms. Well, now you know how gun rights proponents feel.

Want to ban guns? Start repealing the Second Amendment and try to win that debate. This dangerous strategy of chipping away at our rights, one questionable, overly-broad gun control law at a time? No thanks. Who knows what rights we’ll have left once you’re done with it.

Follow @https://twitter.com/jasonrantz