Topic: NewsBusters
Responding to a claim by Newsweek's Ben Adler that high-capacity magazines like the ones Jared Loughner used in his Arizona shooting spree could be regulated without violating the Second Amendment, Ken Shepherd offers a curious analogy in a Jan. 19 NewsBusters post:
Adler would probably be the first to scream censorship, and rightly so, if there was an analogous push by anyone in Congress for legislation restricting say the number of blogs a person could write in a given day. After all, why would anyone in their right mind need to blog more than two or three times a day or tweet more than 10?
Apparently realizing the ridiculousness of his argument, Shepherd added:
Of course, blogs don't kill, bullets do, a liberal would argue in reply, their arguments that harsh political rhetoric led to the Tucson shooting notwithstanding.
But the fact remains that its perfectly legitimate for conservatives to expect governments to have to meet a stringent test for gun control legislation to pass constitutional muster.
Unmentioned in Shepherd's silly analogy: High-capacity blogging doesn't endanger the lives of other people (and if it does, there are laws on the books that are court-approved remedies that yes, restrict First Amendment rights), but as we learned in Tuscon, high-capacity magazines do. If opponents of such regulation can't offer anything beyond constitutional absolutism in support, maybe it's not that strong of a claim.
