Vir­ginia Rally Puts Spot­light on Sec­ond Amend­ment De­bate

The year has barely be­gun, and al­ready Vir­ginia has ex­pe­ri­enced a state of emer­gency. The re­cently elected Gov­er­nor Northam is­sued the ex­ec­u­tive or­der on Jan 15; the state of emer­gency lasted from Jan 17 to Jan 21 and in­cluded an or­der pro­hibit­ing cit­i­zens from car­ry­ing weapons in the Vir­ginia State Capi­tol. Northam is­sued the ex­ec­u­tive or­der in re­sponse to a rally protest­ing gun con­trol leg­is­la­tion that is cur­rently be­ing voted on. 

Tom LaFoun­tain, as­sis­tant pro­fes­sor for crim­i­nal jus­tice, has been closely fol­low­ing these events. 

“One of [the gov­er­nor’s] first big things was to push for some kind of gun con­trol mea­sure,” LaFoun­tain said. “So, in re­sponse, the ad­vo­cates for the sec­ond amend­ment de­cided that they wanted to hold a rally against that.” 

LaFoun­tain said that al­though the no­tion of hav­ing so many peo­ple on state prop­erty car­ry­ing guns was cer­tainly con­cern­ing, the state of emer­gency was is­sued in re­sponse to a much smaller sub­group that it was feared may in­cite vi­o­lence. 

“The thing that re­ally tipped this off was that there was some in­tel­li­gence that there were go­ing to be groups that ad­vo­cated vi­o­lence at this meet­ing,” LaFoun­tain said. “They were re­ally wor­ried that those were the peo­ple that were go­ing to cause prob­lems.” 

De­spite ini­tial back­lash to the state of emer­gency, the rally oc­curred peace­fully on Jan 20. How­ever, the gun con­trol leg­is­la­tion is con­tin­u­ing to move for­ward and is ex­pected to be voted on by the full House this week. 

The is­sue with the de­bate sur­round­ing the Sec­ond Amend­ment, ac­cord­ing to LaFoun­tain, is based on the sub­jec­tiv­ity of the Sec­ond Amend­ment. 

“None of the rights we have in the first 10 amend­ments are ab­solute,” LaFoun­tain said.  

LaFoun­tain cited the First Amend­ment, the right to free speech, as an ex­am­ple; he says that many peo­ple see as this as the “para­mount” of rights and the “ba­sis for democ­racy.”  

“But even then, you can’t just sim­ply say things,” LaFoun­tain said. “You can­not li­bel or slan­der a per­son... there are lim­i­ta­tions on every­thing, and quite hon­estly, I be­lieve there are lim­i­ta­tions that can be put on guns and gun own­er­ship.” 

LaFoun­tain does not be­lieve that the de­bate will end any­time soon. 

“This is go­ing to be some­thing that’s prob­a­bly go­ing to be on­go­ing,” LaFoun­tain said. “This is a con­tro­versy that’s been go­ing on for a while and as long as the two par­ties hold their po­si­tion there are al­ways go­ing to be con­flicts here.” 

LaFoun­tain said that peo­ple should pay at­ten­tion to the news and stay in-tune as much as pos­si­ble with what is hap­pen­ing with this de­bate. 

“Part of be­ing a re­spon­si­ble cit­i­zen is be­ing fully aware of what’s go­ing on,” LaFoun­tain said. “These things that hap­pen in other states they’ll get lit­i­gated prob­a­bly in the fed­eral court, it may even get to the Supreme Court... then all of a sud­den, it af­fects the other states, in­clud­ing In­di­ana.” 

To those cur­rently strug­gling to de­cide which side of the de­bate they will land on, LaFoun­tain gives the fol­low­ing ad­vice. 

“Read, read, and read,” LaFoun­tain said. “The thing is, if you have an opin­ion, it does­n’t mat­ter what it is, but you should be able to tell peo­ple why you have that opin­ion and how you came to that opin­ion; you should be able to sup­port it rather than just hav­ing an opin­ion.”