Founding father and second president of the United States John Adams said, “You will never know how much it has cost my generation to preserve your freedom. I hope you will make a good use of it.”
Perhaps this should be added to American History classes in the Empire State.
Two progressive New York Democrats are basking in a spike of legacy media attention as they propose legislation that will no doubt anger any citizen who values their privacy and rights. Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams and State Sen. Kevin Parker apparently never met a freedom they couldn’t ditch and have decided to use the power of the online jungle to judge you.
How, pray tell? By advocating that state and local law enforcement review three years of social-media history and one year of Internet search history for any person seeking to purchase a firearm.
While details of the bill are as yet unknown, the profound implications against our rights guaranteed under the First and Fourth Amendments cannot be understated. Hell, this idea is careering dangerously toward full-tilt destruction of the original ten amendments, depending on how the proposed information gathered is used against the citizens of New York.
This latest ridiculousness by the Empire State’s genius pols is a media coattail grab on the heels of the tragedy in Pittsburgh, at Tree of Life Synagogue, where 11 people died at the hands of an unstable anti-Semitic individual whose online presence was rife with hate-filled messages.
...a modern-day abuse of unalienable rights.
Adams and Parker claim this proposed legislation would have prevented that tragic event. This is a seriously flawed conclusion. Deranged people do not require an online platform to carry out acts of murder or depravity; if they did, there would have been no massacres or violence in the heady days before AOL and MySpace.
Is this simply another shot fired across the bow in the war on the Second Amendment?
Justification by Democrat
“The price of freedom is eternal vigilance, and so it’s important for us to continue to review our laws as it relates to access to guns and other kinds of weapons.”
That bit of sage wisdom was brought to you by Parker, who was bastardizing several quotes wrapped around the words once uttered by abolitionist Wendell Phillips, Irish politician John Philpot Curran, and most recently Aldous Huxley. Parker warped several versions of the 250-year-old oft-invoked passage to justify his idea of promoting a modern-day abuse of unalienable rights.
And he was backed up by Adams, a retired NYPD captain, who explained, “A three-year review of a social media profile would give an easy profile of a person who is not suitable to hold and possess a fire arm.”
Says who? Lots of people spout off in their safe space – on the keyboard shielded by the internet.
The puzzling aspect is why so few New Yorkers are not up in arms about this. While many of us may not have anything illegal to hide in our online browser history, that does not mean that we might not suffer undue embarrassment. And then there is the question of who is the arbiter of our fate? What may be considered within the Overton Window today, may not be in a mere two years.
When faced with questions any grade-school reporter from Scholastic News might ask, Adams went all in:
“We’re not talking about a person advertising ‘I hate a particular elected official. I hate a policy that’s passed.’ If there’s something that a law enforcement officer of a reasonable mind reviewed that shows this person does not hold the mental capacity to own a gun, then he should not be able to get a permit. We should use the same standard that determines whether a police officer can carry a gun.”
“Mental capacity to own a gun,” this is but a short step from demanding IQ tests, loyalty pledges, and political indoctrination.
Of course, it’s the job of the New York Police Academy to weed out unstable applicants through its version of mental acuity tests, but I’m positive these yahoos know what’s best for the good people of New York.
And the good governor of the great state, Andrew Cuomo, a rabid proponent of strict gun control, did not respond personally but through a spokes-statement issued to a local news outlet, “If there is legislation, we’ll review it.”
Of course, they will. And they should find it, at the very least, obtrusive and insulting.
There Is No Gray Area in Red, White, and Blue America
Adams and Parker are attempting to become household names for whatever political future they idealize. These two Democrats apparently believe that denying liberty to the citizenry, who may or may not express views that they accept, is the way to go about stopping violence.
But one’s opinion cannot be used against a person if no crime has been committed. A monitoring of three years of social media pages and a deep dive into one year of search engine habits are abuses of privacy. For goodness sake, neither of these desecrations of our Bill of Rights should preclude a person from exercising the ability to keep and bear arms to feed and protect his or her family.
There is no gray area. The very idea of this legislation imperils the foundation of our Constitutional Republic.
We should heed the wisdom of yet another American patriot, president, and founding father, Thomas Jefferson, who advised, “I prefer dangerous freedom over peaceful slavery.”
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