The Patriot Post® · It's Time to End Photo ID for ... Buying Guns?

As noted previously, in the wake of the 2020 election, there is a solid plurality of the American people who believe that significant voter fraud occurred, and that Joe Biden’s victory is not legitimate.

Though they spent the last four years claiming President Donald Trump was not America’s legitimate president, and that he “colluded” with Russia to rig the 2016 election, and though they spent the last year or more wildly prophesying that Russia was poised to steal the election for Trump again, Democrats now claim the 2020 election was totally and completely free of fraud, and in fact was the best-run election ever.

As Republican-controlled state legislatures across the U.S. propose a series of bills to tighten up election laws, increase ballot security, and ensure only legal votes are cast, Democrats are fighting tooth and nail to oppose any and all efforts to increase ballot security. The very first bill introduced by House Democrats this year was HR 1, which would essentially do away with voter verification checks altogether.

In fact, Democrats incessantly declare that any efforts to increase ballot security and election integrity are driven by racism and are back-door schemes to suppress the votes of minorities.

Ironically, the people who believe this claim are not generally minorities, but uber-woke, affluent white liberals. Minorities are actually insulted by the assertion that somehow they’re less able to obtain the necessary voter ID or comply with other integrity measures.

But maybe progressive Democrats are right. Maybe, since voting is a (qualified) right that should be exercised by all, it is incumbent upon all who love America and believe in the free exercise of these rights to support making it as easy as possible for everyone to vote. Maybe we should do away with photo ID requirements for voters and take people at their word that they are who they say they are. Maybe people should be able to vote by mail with little effort to verify their identity. After all, people should not be denied the right to vote just because it’s inconvenient for them to come to the polls, right?

Gee, you know what else is a right? The right to keep and bear arms! Why, it’s right there in the Bill of Rights, the second right to be protected by the Constitution and the “palladium of liberties.”

Maybe leftist Democrats are on to something here! Let’s adopt the same standards for gun ownership that we do for voting! We should have the government mail out firearm purchase applications to every single American, and upon completion mail them the firearm of their choice. And since progressives fully support taxpayer funding of the “right” to abortion, surely they would not object to taxpayer subsidies for gun purchases … say, $1,000?

And there can be no more photo ID requirements to purchase a firearm, and certainly no more background checks. Any waiting period has got to go as well. If you can register to vote and then cast a vote on the same day, then you should be able to buy that AR-15 and be ventilating targets an hour later!

We should also consider lowering the age to purchase a firearm to 16, the same age that Democrats are pushing as the new legal voting age.

While we’re at it, let’s not forget the First Amendment’s right to free speech. If “every voice must be heard” when it comes to voting, then the same must apply to the right to speech.

In recent months, Big Tech and the social media monopoly (Facebook, Twitter, etc.) have deplatformed, censored, shadow-banned, or outright banned anyone who dared question the legitimacy of the 2020 elections … except when Democrats cry foul over voter fraud or malfunctioning voting machines. That’s different. Those are legitimate grievances. But we digress.

If we take Democrats’ logic toward voting and apply it to the right to free speech, then everyone in America should have an equal right to those platforms, from the president of the United States all the way down to your neighborhood bartender — even former bartenders who are elected to Congress and then spend their time falsely accusing others of evil deeds and telling blatant lies.

The right to free speech should not be obstructed on these platforms, and everyone should have equal access to say whatever they feel like saying.

Of course, honest, decent, rational people understand that all rights come with responsibilities, and they must be balanced.

That means free speech does not allow someone to call for violence against others, but it does allow people to question the integrity of elections, whether that be Democrats from 2016 through 2020, or Republicans in 2020. And it means, rather than silencing dissent, allowing truth and error to battle it out in the public square.

It also means that we place minimal restrictions to exercising the right to keep and bear arms for law-abiding citizens, while protecting society by denying gun ownership to violent felons and the mentally ill (the actually mentally ill, not just those with “incorrect” political beliefs). And we don’t mail guns to buyers without confirming identities.

Unfortunately, as of now, leftist Democrats want no guardrails on the right to vote, but draconian restrictions on the right of free speech, and the right to keep and bear arms.

In doing so, they reveal that they don’t truly respect the Constitution, or the individual rights protected by it. They only respect power, and their desire to wield it through force or fraud.