Overly broad language can be stealthy ploy against rights
The Washington State Legislature is considering new gun control measures — and one in particular illustrates the sort of semantic “two-step” skeptics of our Second Amendment rights often engage in. The first step is a proposal that some may find, at first glance and especially if they are not versed in the nuances of the issue, to be reasonable. In this case, it is an expansion of what the state will treat as “gun-free” zones to include sites where “children are likely to be present.” But consider for a moment just how vague that language is — and how, in a ...