Should the activities of a student off campus, particularly lawful ones, lead to a violation of the student’s basic civil liberties? The answer is an obvious “no,” right? There’s no way lawful behavior should be probable cause for, say, an illegal search of a privately owned vehicle.
But, as a young man named Jack Harrington can attest, it’s not like it has never happened.
It happened to Harrington, in fact, and he had a gun. The school knew this and decided one day to search his vehicle because guns aren’t allowed on school property. They had no reason to believe Harrington had brought it that day or any other day, mind you. They just decided to look because hey, they’re students. It’s not like they’re actually people.
And the Second Amendment Foundation just secured a win in its fight against this behavior.
“Maintaining safety on school grounds is a laudable goal,” said SAF Executive Director Adam Kraut in a statement to Bearing Arms. “But the Constitution demands that school officials have, at minimum, reasonable suspicion to search a student’s property. Critically, choosing to exercise one’s Second Amendment rights cannot be interpreted as a waiver of your rights under the Fourth Amendment, nor can it create reasonable suspicion of a crime. We’re pleased the school district here has admitted their errors and reinforced that the fundamental rights of their students will be respected.”
The thing is, we’d never see this behavior for any other kind of thing. A kid could have a social media feed of nothing but him flashing gang signs, and no one would ever think of violating his rights the way the district did for Harrington.
Despite numerous refusals to grant permission to search the vehicle, both from Jack and his parents, school officials did so anyway, and they felt righteous enough to do this because gun rights are, in fact, viewed as a second-class right in many parts of this country.
Harrington didn’t have the right to exercise his Second Amendment rights and not forfeit the rest of his civil liberties, all because the anti-gun hysteria is so bad that many cannot fathom the idea of someone owning a gun for a lawful purpose. They can’t wrap their head around it.
“Publicly acknowledging that you’re a gun owner does not justify endless harassment or subject you to invasive searches,” said SAF founder and Executive Vice President Alan M. Gottlieb. “The overwhelming majority of gun owners are law-abiding, peaceable people for their entire lives. Simply choosing to exercise your rights under the Second Amendment does not imply that you may do something criminal with a firearm and does not create reasonable suspicion that a crime has been committed. If that were the case, then lawful gun owners like Mr. Harrington would not just be subject to search of their property on one day – but every day – unless and until they prove that they have sold their constitutionally protected property to the satisfaction of school officials. The Constitution prevents precisely that outcome and worked exactly as designed in this case.”
The issue is the culture whose growth we failed to defeat; one where the idea of gun ownership itself is suspect.
It’s time to cram it down the anti-gunners’ throats.
Editor’s Note: The radical Left will stop at nothing to enact their extreme gun control agenda and strip us of our Second Amendment rights.
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