Kansas City Star publishes ignorant anti-Second Amendment opinion piece, gets blasted on Twitter

The Kansas City Star, once hailed as a place for credible journalism, has become just another left-wing media outlet pushing to grow the government bigger, and take away more freedoms. On Friday, July 28, the media outlet took to Twitter to share their latest published opinion piece, titled, ‘The 2nd Amendment is an 18th century relic. Kansas and U.S. lawmakers need to repeal it.’ As of this publishing, the tweet has received almost as many comments (99) as it has likes (115), and the comments, mostly, pushback against the article.

Were they thinking about this tweet when they wrote about abridging speech?

— Contributory Negligence (@CntrbtryNglgnc) July 28, 2023

Dang, I though the headline was bad but the column is worse. Guess you liked social media clamping down on free speech for the “greater good” too.

— RoosterRooRoo (@RoosterRooRoo1) July 29, 2023

The once respected KC Star is nothing but an echo chamber of far left radical ideology now. No journalism here, just propaganda.

— George Washington 🇺🇸 (@angrypatriot26) July 28, 2023

The opinion piece is by Doug McGaw, a military veteran of Vietnam with a Purple Heart, Bronze Star and Combat Infantry Badge. He is also a former professor of sociology at Emporia State University. 

McGaw starts his piece off talking about why regulations and licenses of motor vehicles are “necessary to minimize harm” because “motor vehicles are inherently dangerous and a major cause of death and injury.” He claims that the restrictions that the government has put on We the People for how we are allowed to go from point A to point B is “common sense” and that when it comes to firearms, “common sense seems to go out the window.”

“They have managed to force stupid open-carry or stand-your-ground laws in multiple states, with the equally stupid argument that ‘the only way to stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun,'” McGaw wrote.

McGaw added, “I assume that the good guys will be the ones in the white hats? Otherwise, who can tell which is the good guy?”

Due to the leftist talking points in this article, we can only assume what he means by, “the ones in the white hats,” as it is typical for unhinged leftists to brand anyone who supports something they oppose as a “racist.” So, of course, those who uphold the Second Amendment would be Klan members in their eyes. However, let’s stop to think what the left is pushing for with gun control, because it literally contradicts their own views. They don’t want anyone to have a gun, with the exception of government officials, of course. You know, like police, of which the left constantly calls “bad,” even coming up with the acronym ACAB (All Cops Are Bad). So, according to leftist logic, they don’t want good guys and bad guys to have guns, they want bad guys to have a monopoly on guns while good guys can’t have any guns.

McGaw goes onto list certain regulations he thinks firearms should have, including: “Minimum age limits, effective training and licensing, uniform registration and licensing of firearms, along with laws requiring their proper safe storage.” He also adds “improper use, handling or storage of guns (including the threat of bodily harm to others) would be subject to confiscation and possible legal action against the owner.”

So, McGaw is pretending that some of these things just don’t exist when they very much do. Under the Gun Control Act of 1968, shotguns, rifles and ammunition for these firearms can only be sold to individuals 18 years old or older. Under the same act, all other firearms and ammunitions may only be sold to individuals ages 21 years and older. Furthermore, it doesn’t matter what a state decides as licensees are bound to the requirements of the GCA regardless of state or local law, unless the state wants to make the minimum age higher.

When it comes to “effective training and licensing,” every responsible gunowner already goes out of their way to receive some form of training without it needing to be mandated by law. By mandating it and requiring a license, all that would be accomplished is raising the price of becoming a legal gunowner, pricing poorer people out of a form of self-defense they would otherwise be able to practice as protected under the Second Amendment. 

When it comes to this idea of “laws requiring their proper safe storage,” what leftists are saying is we need to not only abolish the Second Amendment, but the Fourth Amendment as well, as this would have to happen by requiring armed government officials to enter your home and look at your place to “ensure safety” just because you chose to exercise your Second Amendment right and get a firearm.

What McGaw wrote next made me question the legitimacy of his veteran status due to the amount of ignorance he spewed.

 “As for assault weapons such as the AR-15 and 50-caliber guns, these have no legitimate use in the civilian world, any more than tanks do,” McGaw wrote. “They need to be restricted to the military alone.”

There is no standard definition for the term “assault weapon,” it’s literally just a term gun control activists use to make firearms sound scarier. Also, AR-15’s are not special. AR does not stand for “Assault Rifle,” it stands for “Armalite Rifle,” which is the name of the company and is a more accurate description of the firearm because it’s literally just your standard rifle, it just looks different. If our military had the guns allotted to U.S. civilians, they would be screwed because military firearms are actually way more powerful than anything we have, President Joe Biden has even said that much, himself. 

McGaw goes onto say that “some have argued that vehicles are not protected by the Constitution, whereas firearms are,” and calls this a “bogus argument” before claiming that just as the Constitution could not foresee the advancement in technology for vehicles, it could also not foresee the advancement in technology for firearms. This is a super lazy and overdone argument that McGaw presents, but we’ll debunk it here anyway.

First, despite our Founders not having today’s vehicles, they did have other means of transportation including horses, wagons, and boats. However, they did not claim in the Constitution that you have a right to any of these items either. So, why would anyone think that they would deem motor vehicles as a right today? Second, the Constitution and the first Ten Amendments, known as the Bill of Rights, were written as limits on the government, not on the people. This means that, just because the technology changes, our rights don’t. Much like the Twitter users stated above, our Founding Fathers probably couldn’t have imagined the internet and the capability that we have to communicate, but that does not mean we have new limits to our freedom of speech just because of the newer technology.

He ends by quoting an unhinged argument from former Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens, who said in 2018:

“Rarely in my lifetime have I seen the type of civic engagement schoolchildren and their supporters demonstrated in Washington and other major cities throughout the country this past Saturday. These demonstrations demand our respect. They reveal the broad public support for legislation to minimize the risk of mass killings of schoolchildren and others in our society.

“That support is a clear sign to lawmakers to enact legislation prohibiting civilian ownership of semiautomatic weapons, increasing the minimum age to buy a gun from 18 to 21 years old, and establishing more comprehensive background checks on all purchasers of firearms. But the demonstrators should seek more effective and more lasting reform. They should demand a repeal of the Second Amendment.

“Concern that a national standing army might pose a threat to the security of the separate states led to the adoption of that amendment, which provides that ‘a well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.’ Today that concern is a relic of the 18th century.”

It’s true that gun reform is popular today. Hitler used to be popular as well. Lead paint also used to be popular. Just because something is popular and many people approve of it does not mean it’s a good thing. Furthermore, the idea that a right that was created out of concern over government oppression is a “relic of the 18th century” is not only dangerous but completely ignorant. Regardless of the century, government oppression will always be real. That’s how, during the 20th century, 262 million unarmed citizens got murdered by their governments. 

McGaw then falsely claims that “a “well-regulated militia” is what we today call the National Guard.” 

It’s not. The militia was never meant to be a branch of the government as, again, the Bill of Rights were meant to serve as a check on government power, not increase it. Not to mention, the government has no Constitutional duty to protect you as the Courts have established multiple times. Also, it’s really interesting that gun control activists target the words “well-regulated militia” in the Second Amendment, but never acknowledge the words that follow it, which are, “the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed,” which literally debunks this very stupid argument.

Furthermore, there is a 1996 article from Harvard University Press called ‘To Keep and Bear Arms’ which states:

“The Second Amendment was meant to accomplish two distinct goals…. First, it was meant to guarantee the individual’s right to have arms for self-defense and self-preservation…. These privately owned arms were meant to serve a larger purpose [militia service] as well… and it is the coupling of these two objectives that has caused the most confusion. The customary American militia necessitated an armed public… the militia [being]… the body of the people.” 

McGaw finishes by stating that “elected officials from both parties should embrace commonsense gun reform, the same way they support basic traffic safety measures.”

Which, again, is insanely ignorant as there are nearly 300 federal gun laws on the books and close to 20,000 gun laws on the state and local level. Not to mention that what is considered “commonsense” to one person is not “commonsense” to another. It’s a subjective term that, if taken seriously, would erode our right to self-defense completely as it has done in Australia when they wanted “common sense gun reform” and again in Canada after they swore they wouldn’t be like Australia.