His Excellency is apparently going around the state, attending meet-and-greets for Republicans running for office. There’s one in my area today, but I can’t attend because of prior commitments. However, I hope that at one or more of these events, someone will pose the following questions to him:
1 ) If you really believe, as you’ve said, that public health trumps everything, then it would follow that if you became convinced that private ownership of guns presented a serious risk to public health, you’d be willing to sign a bill to severely restrict gun ownership, in the same way that you were willing to severely restrict the free exercise of religion.
But if that’s not the case, then it would follow that there are some rights that are not trumped by public health. Which ones? Whose job is it to decide which ones? If you think that’s your job, do you just rely on personal preference, or do you have a principled framework for making those decisions?
2) The governor of South Dakota, Kristi Noem, said: ‘My responsibility is to respect the rights of the people who elected me. But the people themselves are primarily responsible for their safety. They are the ones entrusted with expansive freedoms — they are free to exercise their rights to work, worship, and play — or to stay at home, or to conduct social distancing.’
This is the approach required by a plain reading of Article 3 of our own state constitution, but you seem to disagree, claiming that safety — or more precisely, your own personal judgment about what might keep people safe — takes priority over their rights. If you’re willing to ignore the state constitution on its most fundamental principle, why should voters expect that you’ll pay attention to any of its other provisions?
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Ian Underwood is the author of the Bare Minimum Books series (BareMinimumBooks.com). He has been a planetary scientist and artificial intelligence researcher for NASA, the director of the renowned Ask Dr. Math service, co-founder of Bardo Farm and Shaolin Rifleworks, and a popular speaker at liberty-related events. He lives in Croydon, New Hampshire.
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