NY Bill To Mandate Social Media History Search for Gun License Applicants

P. Gardner Goldsmith | December 3, 2018
DONATE
Font Size

The Associated Press recently reported that NY State Senator Kevin Parker, a Democrat from Brooklyn, has proposed a remarkable bill in Albany.

He’s proposed SB 9191, would require individuals to give their past year of web search history and their social media handles and passwords going back three years to the government in order to let the government use that info to tell them whether they can… own a firearm.

Classic! What a guy…

As the fantastic Liberty Doll reports:

The bill… would require (gun license) applicants to give their username and passwords to the government, allowing them to search through all of their Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter posts, and all of their Snapchats, going back three years. It would also require you to let the government look at your internet search history going back one year. This goes for renewals, too.

Perhaps Senator Parker is taking a cue from communist China, where the government is not only working with Google to block search results and track people, not only working with Apple and Amazon to censor online content, but is also establishing a “social credit score” to vote out of internet use any citizens deemed by the state to be “unworthy”, or, to put it in the parlance of the great individualist TV series, “The Prisoner”, “unmutual”.

Here’s what Parker’s bill says police will look for and do once a subject of His Majesty, The State, gives “consent” (which is not consent because it’s under duress: a mandate that one must consent in order to peacefully exercise his right without violent action from the state) to rummage through his or her internet accounts:

COMMONLY KNOWN PROFANE SLURS OR BIASED LANGUAGE USED TO DESCRIBE THE RACE, COLOR, NATIONAL ORIGIN, ANCESTRY, GENDER, RELIGION, RELIGIOUS PRACTICE, AGE, DISABILITY OR SEXUAL ORIENTATION  OF  A  PERSON;  (II)  THREATENING  THE HEALTH  OR  SAFETY OF ANOTHER PERSON; (III) AN ACT OF TERRORISM; OR (IV) ANY OTHER ISSUE DEEMED NECESSARY BY THE INVESTIGATING OFFICER. FOR THE PURPOSES OF THIS SUBDIVISION, "SOCIAL MEDIA ACCOUNTS" SHALL ONLY INCLUDE FACEBOOK, SNAPCHAT, TWITTER AND  INSTAGRAM, AND "SEARCH ENGINE" SHALL ONLY INCLUDE GOOGLE, YAHOO AND BING. Upon completion  of  the  investigation,  the  police authority shall report the results to the licensing officer without unnecessary delay.

He "shall"... unless he wants to abide by the Constitution he swore to “protect and defend”.

That might be an interesting concept to introduce to this quaint move by Senator Parker… That ancient idea of “unalienable rights”, like the darn right to defend oneself against predation by others, even others who go around saying they’re “with the state” and claim “authority” over people.

It’s strange how clear the Second Amendment is on this topic, yet how easy it is for collectivists to overlook it, disregard it, and callously dismiss those who show any tiny bit of temerity to remind them of the fundamental philosophical and ethical principle of the right to self-defense.

And it’s interesting to see how many politicians like Parker are willing to tell people they should rely on agents of the state for their protection, because those would be the same agents of the state who will be vested with the power to threaten them and arrest them if they don’t like their social media posts and said citizens would like to exercise their right to protect themselves with firearms.

Liberty Doll makes another great observation in her report. She notes that in comments on the bill, His Greatness, Senator Parker, says:

Although New York has some of the strictest gun laws in the country, we can no longer provide protection to gun owners at the expense of the rest of society.

Which begs three questions.

First, even if one accepts the anti-rights proposal, how does Demigod Parker’s statement jibe with the Fourteenth Amendment’s requirement of “equal protection” by states?

Second, when he says “provide protection”, does he really mean “provide protection” or does he mean, “we will threaten and use aggressive violence against”? His words ring with all the charm of mafia hoodlums in gangster films, twisting meanings to paint threats as “protection” or the “removal of protection”.

And, finally, if Senator Parker is actually operating under the assumption that the “state” is there to protect anyone, he might want to check the court cases, like “Warren v District of Columbia”, where agents of the state have argued – and courts have agreed – that the government has absolutely no obligation to protect anyone. Instead, they have an obligation to protect…

The government.

Isn’t that nice, Senator Parker?

Or, as I mentioned in my recent piece on the First Circuit Court ruling against the right to keep and bear arms, Senator Parker might bother to read about the practical problem of police response time, which tells us a truism: most often, police aren’t “First Responders”. Civilians are, and, as a suppressed CDC study showed, armed civilians use firearms to stop crimes 3.6 times more often than to engage in them.

So, here we have another example of a man who swears an oath to protect and defend the US Constitution not only proposing a bill that stands in utter contempt of the rules he swears to uphold, but a man who argues like a mafia don and literally wants to breach even more rights in his zeal to breach the right to keep and bear arms.

Is it any wonder why people don’t trust politicians?

donate