Guns and conservative positions
I enjoy reading Ed Morrissey over at Captain's Quarters. I find he's a thoughtful, interesting champion of conservative positions. (There are too many bloggers, conservative or liberal, who write like they are screaming at you all the time. After a while your ears just start to bleed.)
Anyway, as you may have heard, Texas Gov. Rick Perry (in response to the shootings in a "gun-free zone" at Virginia Tech) says he wants to allow people to carry concealed guns everywhere in Texas. And I do mean everywhere: schools, courthouses, supermarkets, hospitals, movie theaters, churches, Little League baseball games, bar mitzvahs, the bathroom, etc. Perry argues that this is the only way that you can ensure that people can be protected at all times from someone like Seung-hui Cho trying to take them out.
What a minute, Morrissey argues. While he's a big believer in gun rights, the captain (as he is called) thinks the governor has gone a little too far on this one.
This would make sense for state property. After all, the government of Texas owns it, and can set the rules as it sees fit. That would have applied to Virginia Tech as well, a public university, whose state created the gun-free zone that failed to deter Seung-hui Cho, the mass murderer who killed 32 unarmed people. If the people of Texas want to allow licensed carriers onto their public property with their firearms, more power to them.However, the state of Texas does not have the right to impose that on private property owners. A bar, restaurant, church, or private school should be allowed to determine whether they want to allow guns on their own property. Churches, for instance, might have a religious objection to the use of firearms. Perry advocates the same argument that activists for smoking bans use -- that private businesses are a public accommodation, and that the safety of the public overrules the wishes of the property owners.
Morrissey gave his posting the title "An Unconservative Stand." But I don't know. One could argue his position is more like the true conservative one than Perry's. Perry's feels like more government intervention. Lots of folks disagree, however, as is evident from the lively debate in the comment section that follows Morrissey's original posting. Worth a read.
2:24 PM ET | 05- 3-2007 | permalink
