One of the reasons we on the right will never agree with the left is that the left chooses not to see the difference in the exercise of a right and the commission of a crime.

Progressives choose not to see the difference in the right to bear arms and mass murder. The choose not to see the difference in free speech and slander. They choose not to see the difference between free exercise of religion and discrimination.

The constant battle over the private possession of firearms and the comma placement in the Second Amendment is just an avatar for a larger agenda of control. At one time or other, the progressive left has sought to criminalize religion, speech, the press, freedom of assembly, redress, and firearms – and that is just in the first two of the ten amendments in the Bill of Rights.

None of the school shootings was the free exercise of the Second Amendment – for that matter, no criminal homicide is the free exercise of the Second Amendment. They all were violation of current laws, before, during and in the aftermath. These were crimes committed by an individual and violate the basic concept of a right by infringing upon the rights of others.

Whereas the use of a firearm in the defense of person or property IS the free exercise of the Second Amendment, the progressive left ignores this and seeks to extend criminal intent to these justifiable acts. They simply ignore any evidence that privately held firearms are used in these situations – even as they are protected by people with guns.

But there is a reason we have a Bill of Rights and not a Bill of Needs, Wants and Desires.

By definition, the result of a people free to exercise their rights is a free society. The left, by generalizing criminal behavior to that free exercise, seeks to eliminate those rights by instituting more behavioral control via a spiderweb of laws, rules and regulations. By implementing “reasonable restrictions” (using their definition of “reasonable”), they will claim that you still have that particular right but the legal constraints they establish will prohibit free exercise resulting in a de facto repeal of that right.

The progressive answer to everything is not to deal with the individual issue but to try to institute a corporate, collective punishment, to eliminate the rights of the majority in an attempt to prevent the criminal acts of a minority. Corporate punishment means they never have to address the failures of the “solutions” they have implemented.

This is why the discussions of the failures of the FBI, the Florida Department of Children and Families, the Broward County Sheriffs Department, the Broward County School District and the administration of Stoneman High School are approaching zero and the discussions of “gun control” approaches 100%.

Eventually, rights will exist in name only if the progressives win the day.

The debate is bigger than just the Second Amendment. It always is when you realize that every right is being (and has been at one time or the other) relentlessly attacked in exactly the same way. There is nothing more institutionalized and systemic than progressivism.

This is why no single inch can be given.