Free Speech And Guns

Free Speech And Guns

By

Leonard Zwelling

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/23/opinion/free-speech-kimmel-kirk-left.html

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/26/opinion/dallas-ice-shooter-kirk-luigi.html

In this editorial by New York Times conservative columnist Bret Stephens, he describes the many instances where speech was inhibited or frankly banned during the Biden years. It was pressure from the left that barred free speech then. This barred speech included many objections to Covid restrictions, bans of trade with Israel, and cancellations of speeches by right-wing speakers on many college campuses. Freedom of speech has to run throughout the political spectrum not just on the left.

These restrictions on speech by the left are every bit as bad as those now being promulgated on Jimmy Kimmel and many others by critics on the right. It’s either real free speech or it’s not. As Rosa Luxemburg is quoted in the Stephens article, “Freedom is always and exclusively freedom for the one who thinks differently.”

So, let’s agree that attempts at inhibiting free speech have come from both the right and the left and neither is acceptable. Let’s also agree that the place where this matters most may not be network, late-night TV, but on the Internet. (see second op-ed by Michelle Goldberg).

Now, let’s move from the First Amendment to the Second.

In the United States currently there are more guns than there are people. That’s a lot of guns. It stands to reason that some of those guns will fall into the hands of young men (they seem to be the problem), some of whom have been radicalized by what they read on the Internet or see in video games. At some point, some of these young men will meld what they have seen or heard on the Internet with the belief I have heard from Second Amendment proponents that the reason we need to have the right to guns is to protect ourselves from an autocratic government.

Now, if these young men who are radicalized come to believe that an ICE detention center, or a conservative advocate, or even the President of the United States represents autocracy, one young man might take a gun and use it thinking that he is striking a blow for freedom consistent with the logic of the proponents of the Second Amendment.

There is a connection between free speech on the Internet and the increased instances of political violence. In essence, the free speech gives birth to the violence and the argument that we all need guns, in turn leads to assassinations. The effect of the First Amendment and the effect of the Second Amendment can prove deadly.

The Second Amendment argument is also ludicrous. Look at what the Trump Administration is putting on the street in the way of military power in sanctuary cities. Does anyone really think a few hundred citizens with assault rifles could successfully battle a brigade of the Marines ordered into Los Angeles?

I believe this is what we are seeing now. There is radicalization on both the left and the right, despite what Mr. Trump says. Now we know that the likelihood that a young man with illusions that he is striking a blow for freedom and against autocracy might well take a gun and shoot someone.

I am not suggesting that there should be any inhibition of what we are allowed to say as long as it does not directly incite violence. We just need to be aware that free speech on the Internet can give birth to political resentment and the proliferation of guns makes violence inevitable.

Of course, we could mandate gun licensing, but so many Americans feel that would infringe on their rights. Fine, then this violence is likely to continue.

Maybe we need to re-interpret the Second Amendment. I get the American need for guns, I just think that owning one ought to be a right you earn, but I know that I’ll lose this argument. And the political assassinations will not stop.

This is all a uniquely American problem. As long as Americans believe that they must have access to firearms to protect themselves from an autocratic government and that young men have access to all kinds of political wildness on the Internet, the political violence will continue and do so mostly here in America. Maybe it is time to re-examine the First and Second Amendment. Should there be limits on free speech? I don’t think so, but inciting violence on the Internet should be punishable. Should there be limits to gun ownership? Yes, there should. Guns are more lethal than cars. You should have a license to own one and getting that license ought to take some knowledge, some skill, a mental health check, and the absence of a criminal record no matter where a gun is purchased—even at a gun show.

I realize how much guns are part of American history and American life, but they are killing too many innocent people. When will we try to stop it?