The Right To Bear News

Let's take a break from the discussion of gun laws and the Second Amendment (see previous post and comments) to look behind us at the First Amendment.

It was intended to protect our inherent freedoms of religion, assembly, speech and the press. Naturally, I want to focus on freedom of the press. Consider for a moment the similarities between guns and newspapers. Sure, some technological advancements have been made over the centuries (machine guns and color printing presses), but for the most part they've gone unchanged since the founding fathers first sought to protect these two forms of expression. Newspapers are still ink on paper and guns still fire bullets. Compared to the changes we've seen in things like medicine and travel, guns and newspapers seem archaic.

If one can argue, as the literal-minded gun supporters do, that the amendment should be interpreted as the founding fathers intended, then we need to protect newspapers. Freedom of the press did not mean anything else to them. They could not have imagined a world with cable news, the internet, blogging and Twitter. When they said "press," they meant ink on newsprint! So where are the U.S. citizens rushing to protect our First Amendment right to bear newspapers? Why can't newspaper lovers muster up the same fit and fury gun lovers do when defending their AK-47s?

Below is the cartoon I drew for last Sunday's paper. The newspaper industry is in crisis, people. We need a call to arms!