Pop Media Parrot Falsehood About SCOTUS 'Expanding Gun Rights'

P. Gardner Goldsmith | June 27, 2022
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An additional facet emerging from the June 23 Supreme Court ruling in favor of the right to conceal-carry a firearm outside the home can be found in studying the way numerous popular media outlets subsequently spouted the same erroneous claim that the Thomas-written majority opinion “expanded” the right to keep and bear arms.

Some logic, a touch of historical knowledge, and fundamental philosophy might have come in handy for these “news” sites.

Shortly after the ruling Thursday, our friends at the Associated Press (sometimes mistaken for Associated Propagandists) and their reporter, Jessica Gresko, offered what will be the first of a very familiar and misleading series of similar mischaracterizations, publishing this headline:

Supreme Court expands gun rights, with nation divided

Jumping into the same dirty waters, The Hill, and their reporter, John Kruzel, offered their erroneous banner:

Supreme Court expands gun rights in major Second Amendment ruling

Not to be outdone, Reuters and their duo Katherine Jackson and Richard Cowan, displayed their own similar brand of idiotic braying:

U.S. House passes gun-safety legislation as court expands gun rights

And what parade of misinformed/misinforming parrots would be complete without a local California news story being picked up, and propagated nationally?

Via Yahoo, we get Los Angeles Fox affiliate TV 11 wailing:

Supreme Court expands gun rights; What will this mean for California?

If Californians allow themselves to be misled by your headline, oh, great Channel 11, it means more of their time spent living in ignorance of the English language, philosophy, and the nature of rights.

So, for those media standouts mentioned above, and those reporters and editors willing to follow their errant path, here are a few handy, irrefutable pointers.

First. Rights preexist the polis/state/government. God imbues man with natural, individual rights that only each person, as an individual, has the God-granted prerogative to voluntarily attenuate when interacting with others who may do the same. The state cannot create rights. The state cannot “expand” rights.

The only way the polis/state exists is by infringing on our rights.

The great subterfuge under which all states operate – especially so-called “representative governments” (even those with beleaguered “constraining” constitutions) -- is the claim that the polis exists to protect your rights to life, property, speech, religion, association, trade, and more. But the only way government gets its funds to supposedly protect your property, etc., is by its thugs and supporters illegitimately claiming the “authority” to take your property, and by also claiming that, should you resist, the agents of the polis can arrest you. 

And, should you resist the arrest, the state’s agents, operators, and parasitic elite claim that they can threaten your life.

The tautology is obvious: In order to “protect your property” from people, the people populating the offices of the state take your property and threaten you.

It’s a little reminder for these reporters and editors… The state/polis is not in any way a protector of rights or an “expander” of rights. All its agents can do is lay off at varying times, and, for a stretch leave us a little less threatened.

Related: Biden’s Assault On Right To Keep And Bear Arms Is Indefensible and Absurd | MRCTV

Which is what the SCOTUS ruling Thursday tells New York State it is supposed to do, based on the SECOND AMENDMENT that prohibits ANY infringement on the right to keep and bear arms.

This slipshod approach to rights is a perennial problem within the pop media and the various arms of the government leviathan they promote. In fact, not only do I and other liberty-minded writers repeatedly have to tell them that rights preexist the state, and that the state exists only as an aggressor, at the expense of rights, we also have to remind them of the origin of the word “right” itself.

It was only June 7 when I did just that, because El Presidente Joe Biden is either completely ignorant of, or antagonistic to, Natural Rights. It’s possible he is both.

As I noted:

The term ‘right’ stands for ‘hands-off,’ and is universal for all people, meaning that each of us has an equal right to be left alone. Rights are negative in nature, not positive. The idea of a ‘positive right’ to something provided by another person is not a right, it’s an immoral claim, ‘posited’ by agents of the state.

In other words, it is an attempt to enslave.

And I added this, which the reporters and editors might want to remember:

The term ‘right’ has its origins in Old English (Saxon), Middle Dutch, and Medieval German. It pertains to ‘proper,’ which, in those days, was associated with ‘right-handedness’ and stemmed from both the belief at the time that people who were ‘left-handed’ were not functioning properly, and from the Biblical observation of the Messiah being the ‘right hand of God.’

In other words, oh great “journalists” at AP, The Hill, Reuters, Yahoo, Fox11: the Thomas-led majority on the SCOTUS Thursday did not “expand” the right to keep and bear arms.

An entity that exists by way of infringement of rights cannot ever expand rights, and to argue otherwise is to either exist in a fantasy world, or intentionally mislead.

Related: 9th Circuit Court Rules People Have NO RIGHT To Openly Carry Firearms | MRCTV

 

 

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