Hot Take: The Gun Sanctuary Movement Is Seeking Protection From Democracy Itself!

Surprisingly, there has been very little written in terms of the 2nd Amendment gun sanctuaries, except for straight articles. So, if there’s going to be a hot take, it has to be a scorcher, right? Along comes Francis Wilkinson at Bloomberg, which is, of course, owned by gun grabber Michael Bloomberg

The True Aim of the Gun Sanctuary Movement

At first glance, the Second Amendment sanctuary movement currently burrowing into rural Virginia looks like a ballistic twist on the immigrant sanctuary cities movement. Both movements defy the law, one to protect undocumented immigrants from legally sanctioned deportation, the other to protect unlicensed firearms from legally sanctioned regulation.

But there is a significant difference, more political than legal. One sanctuary movement aims to protect a vulnerable population from personal harm. The other movement seeks to protect a group’s capacity to do harm — no matter how loud the outcry from a population vulnerable to gun violence.

First, that’s actually not the primary hot-take. Second, it’s not guns that are licensed, but citizens. The vast majority of lawful firearms owners have no problem with background checks, and want firearms kept out of the hands of criminals. The gun grabber movement seeks to make law abiding citizens into criminals, rather than cracking down on criminals who use guns. Also, it is interesting that Wilkinson mentions “unlicensed”: is that a slip up that denotes what the gun grabbers actually want, which is registration, which means it is easier to confiscate later?

Advocates for immigrant sanctuaries commonly invoke humanitarian, economic and public-safety arguments. Leaders of the guns-everywhere-for-anybody movement tend to dress up their concerns in the legal finery of the Second Amendment (minus the “well-regulated militia” part). Their argument, reduced to its essence, is two words: It’s unconstitutional.

Well, yeah. She should also read the Virginia Constitution, Article I, Section 11 (due process) and Section 14 (firearms).

Roughly 100 Virginia cities and counties have embraced some kind of sanctuary provision regarding guns. Other locales around the nation have as well. In the extremes of gun culture, commonplace proposals are treated as existential threats.

The thing is, we know where your “commonplace proposals” lead, when gun grabbers talk about the Australian, and now New Zealand, solution: mass bannings and confiscation of lawfully acquired firearms from non-criminals, disarming the public.

Let’s skip to the primary hot-take

America is a representative democracy. But the gun lobby and other parts of the conservative coalition are increasingly skeptical of that. Armed with an all-purpose Constitution that means whatever they want it to mean, they seek to block popular government action.

Nope, it is a representative republic. Same with Virginia, which has lots of protections for the minority from the majority. When can call them part of the Democracy model, since they vote. But, it is still a republic, not a democracy. Not mob rule.

The Second Amendment sanctuaries emerging in Virginia and elsewhere may mark a burgeoning conservative counterculture. Contempt for the “geographically small, yet heavily populated” regions where most Americans reside is becoming a conservative tic. It’s the impetus behind those triumphal MAGA maps depicting countless hectares of American forest, farm and pasture in bold Republican red, while little enclaves such as Brooklyn, with a higher population than 15 states, are dismissed with a tiny blotch of blue.

Densely populated America, in other words, is not real America, and opposing real America is by definition unconstitutional. What the gun sanctuary movement is seeking is not protection from government overreach, but from democracy.

Well, that would be a sick burn if the nation, and Virginia, were democracies.