What Do Shut Down Protests Have to Do with Gun Extremism?
Without their guns, the American public and media might dismiss these extremists for what they are: a vanishingly small, but vocal, minority.
By Kelly Sampson, Counsel of Constitutional Litigation, Legal Alliance, and Racial Justice at Brady Legal
Last week, extremists flooded the Michigan State House to intimidate lawmakers debating the state’s emergency orders. Unbelievable images showed crowds, brandishing assault-style weapons and ammunition, menacing lawmakers, shouting down staff, and disrupting proceedings to the point that state police blocked them from entering the voting chamber.
Unfortunately, formerly surreal sights are commonplace in America in 2020. Just this year, protestors used similar tactics to protest federal and state gun laws in Kentucky and Virginia. Now in the coronavirus era, those protesting emergency orders also capitalize on open-carry laws, for one simple reason: attention.
Without their guns, the American public and media might dismiss these extremists for what they are: a vanishingly small, but vocal, minority.
These protests have defied both common-sense and the common good, to demand “freedom” from stay-at-home orders instituted to stop the spread of coronavirus. It seems they want “liberty” and death — claiming their “liberty,” even though it may cause our death.
As it turns out, gun activists, intent on sacrificing public safety for a dollar, are behind many of these so-called grassroots protests. As The Washington Post discovered, the infamous, gun extremist Dorr brothers are behind some of the largest Facebook groups organizing anti-quarantine protests — and it appears they’re making money from it.
The Dorrs are using the anti-quarantine Facebook groups to drive people to their various gun groups, where they can join — for a fee. They know their audience well because the anti-quarantine protests and their movement have a lot in common. Both movements are —
1. Out of touch with the vast majority of Americans
Protests against emergency orders have gotten a lot of media coverage, but make no mistake, most Americans think they’re wrong. A Reuters national poll from April 15–21 found that 72% of adults in the country agree with “staying at home until the doctors and public health officials say it is safe.” Respect for public health directives enjoys bipartisan support: 88% of Democrats and 55% of Republicans hold that view.
And despite what pro-gun groups say, gun violence prevention measures also enjoy broad, bipartisan support. A Quinnipiac poll, for example, found that 92% of American voters — including gun owners — support universal background checks. And a Washington Post/ABC poll found that 86% of Americans support Extreme Risk Protection Laws. Just as these protests present a fringe minority as mainstream, the gun lobby tries to pass off its unpopular positions as the norm.
2. Promoting Insurrection, Not Freedom
Many protestors characterized public health responses to coronavirus as “tyranny” and attacks on “freedom,” and vowed, sometimes gun-in-hand, to “fight back.” Similarly misguided bravado has animated gun extremists for decades. Then NRA President, Charlton Heston, for example, once vowed to “defeat divisive forces that would take freedom away,” a month after the Columbine massacre, famously brandishing a rifle and daring Vice President Gore to take it “From my cold, dead hands!” Both these protestors and gun extremists mistakenly view “freedom” as the right to do whatever you want, whenever you want — even if it threatens someone else. The Second Amendment is not a license for insurrection. In reality, the Constitution is not a “suicide pact.” Americans’ first freedom is the right to live. “Freedom” has always comprehended reasonable regulations designed to protect public safety. As Justice Antonin Scalia said, “[l]ike most rights, the Second Amendment right is not unlimited. It is not a right to keep and carry any weapon whatsoever in any manner whatsoever and for whatever purpose.”
3. Profit-Driven — Not Rights-Driven
The Dorr brothers are reportedly exploiting the public’s economic anxieties to bring in money. The gun lobby does the same thing. While many Americans are drawn to firearms for legitimate sporting, hunting, or security purposes, the gun lobby exploits their genuine interest for money. As the Violence Policy Center reports, the gun industry uses its legislative power and public fear for profit. The gun industry, for instance, responded to declining sales by advocating for Concealed Carry laws that would boost sales. Like the protests, the gun extremists capitalize on regular people’s genuine concerns to enrich profiteers.
4. Reckless
With public health officials advising people to stay in whenever possible and practice physical distancing when out, these protests, in which people gathered in groups or obstructed ambulances, seemed breathtakingly reckless. The protestors put themselves, and everyone else, at risk of catching and spreading coronavirus. In the same way, the gun lobby’s reckless gun promotion and reckless opposition to reasonable gun regulations, puts everyone at risk. About 300 people are shot in the United States every day; about 100 of those people die. Similarly situated countries do not experience this type of gun violence, in part, because they enact gun safety policies based on public safety and proven social science, rather than the interests of a reckless, profit-driven industry. The protests and the gun lobby share a reckless disregard for public safety.
5. Aligned with White Supremacy
Many protesters displayed confederate flags, swastikas, and antisemitic signs as they demanded states to ease efforts to contain a virus that is, in many places, killing disproportionate numbers of Black and Latino people. The gun lobby and gun extremists, too, use coded or outright racist tropes to promote gun policies that wreak disproportionate havoc on Black and Latino people. Although the overwhelming majority of Americans support reasonable gun violence prevention measures, Professor Kerry O’Brien found that “[o]pposition to gun control is considerably stronger in whites than blacks, with whites also reporting twice the rate of personal gun ownership and having a gun in the home, than is reported by blacks.”
As Professor Ibram Kendi wrote in the Atlantic, “antiracists are struggling, unsuccessfully, to ban the assault rifle today and control the flow of guns- just as they struggled, unsuccessfully, to ban the lynch mob a century ago. Moved by the National Rifle Association, racists are struggling, successfully, to defend the assault rifle today as they struggled, successfully to defend the lynch mob a century ago.”
Considering all this, it’s not at all surprising that pro-gun activists are undermining the vast majority of Americans’ efforts to keep each other safe — they’ve been doing it for decades.
Public health officials around the world agree that coronavirus is hard to contain, deadlier than the flu, and a real threat to health systems in the same way that public health officials agree that guns in the home increase the occupants’ risk of homicide, suicide, unintentional death. Yet, against all evidence, the anti-quarantine protesters insist on marching, organizing, and congregating in large groups, in the same way that the gun industry continues to push more guns as a solution to gun violence and crime. Their efforts to threaten and intimidate undermine our democratic institutions, but as Abraham Lincoln once said, “Do not mistake that the ballot is stronger than the bullet.”
In these instances, just as we saw in Michigan, these fringe minorities have grabbed the attention of the nation and headlines by defying evidence-based advice from public health officials. Media coverage should emphasize that these demonstrations represent a fringe group rather than truly grassroots, mass movements like the Women’s March or Black Lives Matter. Equally, political leaders on both sides of the aisle should boldly and loudly denounce these extremists and the insurrection they threaten to incite. It’s time we stopped letting them misrepresent the views of our country and hijack the nation’s agenda.
