Neighboring state’s gun control push too rushed for comfort

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Advocates for gun control have pushed more than a dozen separate bills through Virginia’s state legislature in less than two months.

We must question if these proposals are truly being carefully deliberated upon.

Some of these changes, such as bans on long-legal types of firearms, deserve more transparent debate in any legislature than what this rush by Virginia’s lawmakers has allowed.

As we have editorialized in the past, much of what skeptics about our Second Amendment and our right to keep and bear arms envision simply isn’t possible in a free society — we fear the mechanisms and practices that making these proposals work would require would violate much more than the Second Amendment — as important as it is.

Investigation and enforcement of some of these policies, we fear, would also erode principles of due process, of freedom of speech and of the rights to peacefully assemble and associate.

As we noted nearly two years ago, politicians pushing for gun control in New York could not stop themselves from delving into encroaching on other rights as well, using the regulatory power of the state to harass and impede legitimate businesses that did not disfavor legal firearms-related businesses.

New York’s leaders “were clear that they sought to punish the NRA because they disagreed with its gun rights advocacy,” David Cole of the American Civil Liberties Union, said at the time. “The Supreme Court has now made crystal clear that this action is unconstitutional.”

We understand and respect the desire to make America safer — which is why we continue to ask our lawmakers are every level to ensure law enforcement, particularly probation and parole officers, have the resources to effectively investigate and charge criminals.

We believe a greater focus by policy makers on criminals, and especially recidivist criminals, will improve American safety far more than creating bureaucratic hurdles and arbitrary limitations on law-abiding men and women.

The impulse to encroach on Americans’ right to own firearms still seems to be joined at the hip to other unfortunate impulses — dismissiveness to other cherished Constitutional rights and derision for the role thoughtful, nuanced debate and compromise plays in the legislative process among them.

We continue to hope Pennsylvania’s lawmakers understand the interconnectedness between all of Americans’ liberties and the role prudent debate plays in keeping government accountable to Americans and their rights.