One VA Legislator 'Gets It' - The Danger of So-Called 'Gun-Free Zones'

P. Gardner Goldsmith | March 4, 2020
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As the world gazes in dispeptic wonder at the Democrat-controlled government of Virginia attacking the right to keep and bear arms, there are some glimmers of hope. Take Senate Bill 1009, introduced by stalwart VA defender of the right to self-defense, State Senator Amanda Chase.

This bill, which is slowly winding its way through the VA Senate Judiciary Committee, would flip the “Gun-Free Zone” anti-rights mentality on its head, even as it exposes the faux-care of those who promote the idea that slips of paper and government-issued, tax-funded signs will deter murderously-minded people from using guns.

In fact, the way it would expose this giant fraud also reveals something deeper about the offensive nature of the state.

The key about SB 1009 is Chase’s sagacious focus on what is called “Sovereign Immunity”, and here’s the key provision:

Notwithstanding any other provision of law, if (i) the Commonwealth adopts any rule, regulation, or policy, or passes any law, designating any property, or any part of such property, owned or occupied by it as a firearm-free zone or (ii) any locality adopts any ordinance, resolution, or motion designating such locality, or any part of such locality, as a firearm-free zone, the Commonwealth or such locality waives its sovereign immunity as it relates to any injuries sustained by persons lawfully present in such firearm-free zone.

So, in essence, Chase seems to know that calling a place a “firearm-free zone” is not a disincentive to criminally-minded people to enter such zones and use firearms to harm innocent people. In fact the label “firearm-free zone” appears to attract armed criminals. As the Crime Prevention Research Center has noted, between 1950 and 2018 inclusive, 94 percent of all mass shootings have been perpetrated in so-called “firearm-free zones” – which sure is strange, since everyone knows that when government passes a prohibition, criminally-minded people are VERY inclined to abide by the statutes and those “gun-free zones” couldn’t possibly have guns brought into them to hurt people. Right?

The magic unicorns of “firearms-free zones” stop bullets. We ALL know that.

Senator Chase’s bill exposes the gun-grabbers for their fraudulent and dangerous mentality, even while exposing some attentive residents to a fundamental problem inherent in the nature of our modern US government.

And to fully understand that, we need to understand the idea of “Sovereign Immunity”, a term that harkens back to the feudal era, and exposes the feudal nature of even “our” contemporary government.

“Sovereign Immunity” is intimately tied to the old feudal concept of the “Royal We”, wherein a monarch was supposedly the “embodiment of the state and its subjects”, and, as a result, would always refer to himself or herself in the plural, “We”, rather than the singular. As a “non-person/gestalt-being” this so-called “sovereign” thus was (folks were told) “immune” from personal liability or prosecution for his or her own decrees.

But as monarchies fell away to so-called “constitutional republics” and “representative democracies” throughout America and Europe, this “Royal We” and its attendant “immunity” were transposed to non-monarchical states. Now, we’re fed the disastrously laughable myth that the government is supposedly “us”, so how could it possibly be held liable for damage we might do to “ourselves”?

So Senator Chase’s bill opens a window onto this fraudulent practice. It not only reveals the danger of statutes that would disarm peacefully-minded people in “gun-free zones” by allowing folks to sue the state should criminals take advantage of those statutes, it puts people on notice that the government claims this bogus “immunity” in the first place.

It’s unlikely that her bill will pass. After all, the gun-grabbing Dems control everything in the VA Statehouse and most of them would be horrified by the idea that the state should be held accountable for its own errors. But Don Quixote’s fight against evil was no less noble because it was unwinnable. And, in this case, Senator Chase stands apart from Don’s quest because Cervantes’ Quixote was fighting imagined enemies, and Senator Chase is fighting against actual, anti-rights, gun-grabbers.

Indeed, she seems to understand that the enemies to liberty are real.

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