Judging Freedom - Here's the Problem with Registering Guns

Episode Date: April 25, 2022

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Hi there, everyone. Judge Andrew Napolitano for Judging Freedom. Today is Monday, April 25th, 2022. It's about 1.15 in the afternoon here on the East Coast of the United States. From time to time, the Biden administration and all presidential administrations have done this, will dispatch a member of Congress either to go on the talk shows or to write an op-ed defending the president's position on something. You may recall not too long ago, the president came out and said he's against ghost guns, he's against guns that aren't registered, and he hopes that there will be someday universal background checks conducted by the federal government before anybody can buy a gun. Well, in some states there already are background

checks. The state of New Jersey, for example, where I live, the state police conduct a background check relying on federal records. So they look at FBI records as well as their own. So it's a joint federal and state check. Not all states have that. What's the objection to federal background checks? Well, I'll tell you the objection. The objection is that this will federalize, that is take away from the states, the ability to liberate their citizens with respect to guns. I mean, the right to keep and bear arms is a fundamental liberty akin to the right to speech or the freedom of religion. And you don't need the permission of a bureaucrat in order to engage in freedom of speech or freedom of religion. You shouldn't need the permission or the registration with a bureaucrat in order to

keep and bear arms. The fear that those of us who believe that, like Justice Scalia, when he wrote in the famous Heller versus D.C. opinion that the right to keep and bear arms is a personal individual right, because that's what the Constitution says. The fear that those of us who believe that the Constitution means what it says is that it's a very slippery slope from universal background check to universal registration, and that would be horrific if there were universal registration. What's wrong with registration? Well, if a foreign government were assaulting us here, as is happening in Ukraine and see how those people are using weapons to repel the invader. I'm not going to get into whether or not this is a border dispute or whether Putin is crazy or whether Putin is lawful. But the reason that battle is not over is because the Ukrainians armed themselves

because they have the right to keep and bear arms. We have the right to keep and bear arms. Every time a tyrant takes over the country, a country, the first thing he does is let's take guns away from the people so that they'll obey us. How do we know who has guns? We'll go to the list of registration. That's the problem with registering guns. You don't have to register your laptop. You don't have to register your printer. You don't have to register your Bible. You shouldn't have to register your guns. Judge Napolitano for judging freedom.