GUNS AND FOOD

            You may be aware of efforts in numerous cities to ban gun stores through the use of zoning ordinances.  By and large, courts have struck down these regulations as being unconstitutional.

             For example, in McDonald striking down Chicago's attempt, the courts ruled that the right to keep and bear arms extended to the right to acquire those arms.  A right to have implies a right to acquire.  Interestingly, in some rulings the courts have sided with an ordinance to cap new gun stores if a couple already exist in the jurisdiction.  In other words, if Newark  already has four gun stores, it's okay to prohibit a fifth.  But if Newark doesn't have any, it can't prohibit a gun store with explicit language in a zoning ordinance.

             I read about all this in my America's 1st Freedom magazine, the official publication of the National Rifle Association.  I don't want anyone to read any anti-gun thinking into this post before I make my point.  Just for the record, I think it would be fine for citizens to own tanks and artillery cannons.  The swing of power from the citizenry to the federal government under Woodrow Wilson and Franklin Roosevelt can hardly be grasped.  But I digress.

             The point I want to make is that we've had far more litigation protecting the right to acquire guns of our choice than the right to acquire food of our choice.  Right now, I can't legally buy a glass of raw milk in the state of Virginia.  I can't legally buy a home-made chicken pot pie.  I can't legally buy homemade charcuterie.

             I can buy Coca Cola, industrial charcuterie and pasteurized milk.  But what if that's not what I want?  What if I want to exercise freedom of choice as a consenting adult to feed my newly-acquired cross-sexually identified body raw milk?  Or homemade pepperonis?  Or soup from my neighbor's kitchen and garden?

             When is the last time you heard a presidential candidate use the term liberty?  Isn't it interesting that when Franklin Roosevelt froze wages--an absolutely Draconian unconstitutional take-over on the right of private contract--employers, desperate for a way to reward good employees, began offering health insurance.  Prior to that time, all medical coverage was private--it truly was between my doctor and me.

             But with Roosevelt's power grab, it moved into the work sector, which took away personal involvement, personal understanding, personal responsibility.  Today, it has progressed (or regressed?) to a labyrinth of government regulations and a convoluted opaqueness.  This is the slippery slope created by those who believe bureaucrats can organize society better than the ragged hodge-podge known as free markets.  Market turmoil may not be pretty, but it sure beats despotism.  Like ecology, markets are dynamic.  .

             And yes, I would have let the banks fail.  And I would not have made banks give risky loans to anybody.  The problem is when you begin manipulating markets, from gun stores to raw milk, you play with a ton of unknowns that come back to bite you in strange ways.  The government's prime responsibility is to protect liberty; not only do we not hear that in political discourse anymore, but instead hear about using the government as a bludgeon to beat the flavor du jour into the marketplace.

             As Paul Harvey used to say, "we worry about the wrong things."  I'm far more concerned about the freedom to acquire the food of my choice than I am pay inequality, race relations, college loans, a nuclearized Iran or North Korea, immigrants, or opioids.  Are those all important?  Perhaps.  But they pale in comparison to the most basic human right imaginable:  the right to feed my micro-biome the fuel of my choice.  Unfortunately, this right did not make it into the Bill of Rights.

             Would you support a FOOD EMANCIPATION PROCLAMATION to unshackle food from the slavery of government ownership?