[h=1]First the Second, Second the First[/h] By Rick Sapp // 04/06/2018


Don’t even imagine that the assault on the 2[SUP]nd[/SUP] Amendment is finished or even pausing for a breath. Your right to own a firearm and carry a concealed weapon for self-defense should never be taken for granted. The continuous attack on the 2[SUP]nd[/SUP] Amendment should not blind us to ongoing and not-so-subtle attacks on the 1[SUP]st[/SUP] Amendment and other amendments.
The first thing that will happen is that books and movies will be banned if they contain language, thoughts and ideas considered to be harmful to the social fabric, hurtful of some minority group’s feelings or provocative for young people. The author and perhaps the readers will be forced to attend a re-education seminar, or else the books will be banned outright. Some books that might be banned are The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, Beloved, Lolita, Catch-22, The Satanic Verses, Lady Chatterly’s Lover, Fahrenheit 451, Gone With the Wind, To Kill a Mockingbird, A Streetcar Named Desire and many more.
Free speech will be cloaked in a suffocating mantle of political correctness. Jokes and comedians will be censored. George Carlin would be censored for pronouncing his seven dirty words. Lenny Bruce would be arrested for obscenity, and Richard Pryor for a risqué performance. German Chancellor Angela Merkel wants comedian Jan Böhmermann prosecuted because a poem he wrote apparently mocks Turkey’s president Recep Tayyip Erdogan. In Britain, a Scottish satirist named Markus Meechan now awaits sentencing and real jail time after uploading a YouTube video about his dog named Buddha raising a paw in imitation of a Nazi salute. The mayor of London Sadiq Khan wants to ban billboards that show women in bathing suits because they “can demean people, particularly women.”
Just a couple of years ago, I visited a store in St. Augustine, Florida’s tourist district that sold the usual things you throw away when you get home from vacation. I was intrigued by a display of religious action figures including Jesus, Muhammad and Buddha. I bought a Jesus figure and a year later thought it would be interesting to collect them all. Returning to the store, I asked for the Muhammad figure. “We don’t have any of those,” the clerk said. But they were right there on the shelf. “No. We never carried any of them,” he said. I called his bluff and was asked to leave the store.
The 1[SUP]st[/SUP] Amendment includes religion and “the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.” Try that. Get a group of 2[SUP]nd[/SUP] Amendment believers or flag-carrying American patriots to walk in the street, perhaps occupy city hall or close a university. Laughable, isn’t it? I imagine that because the group is not politically untouchable, the police would be busting heads and clearing the streets and offices in a matter of minutes. No, to assemble peaceably these days requires a permit, government approval, a stamp, a license, a fee or an insurance binder (all those things that make a mockery of the 1[SUP]st[/SUP] Amendment).
So don’t even imagine that attacks on the 2[SUP]nd[/SUP] Amendment are the end of the social engineering. If we’re not vigilant, our right to self-defense will be only the first thing we lose.