Your Right to Free Speech, Like My Right to Self-Defense, Isn’t Open to Debate

Today, some students, teachers, and other Americans who share their views are walking out of classes across the country to call for limits on the right of free assembly. Wait, strike that. They’re walking out of classes to call for further restrictions on protections against unreasonable search and seizure. Nope, that’s not it either. Wait, I have it: they’re protesting for greater regulation of self-defense rights. Yup, there we go.

Of course, they’re exercising their free speech rights in the process, and that’s as it should be (although at least some of the kids have been conscripted into exercising somebody else’s free speech rights by school officials who expect that their charges will adhere to officially endorsed positions). After all, the exercise of individual rights shouldn’t be subject to popular opinion or debate.