“Gun safety for me but not for thee.” This is how the leftist news outlet characterized the Governor’s decision to install metal detectors.

Honestly, I did not read the article. I am too cheap to pay for a subscription.

I am a libertarian populist, so I sometimes agree with the Arkansas Times headlines. Not this time.

I am a firm believer in the second amendment right to bear arms. This does not mean I own a gun or would ever use one. It does mean I think there would need to be great cause shown before a court could take the right to have a gun away. This is a higher burden than the “good cause” courts sometimes claim to have in wielding their power, under the implied threat of force, of course.

Too often restraining orders that take the right to possess a weapon are given for little or no reason. I had a former spouse ask for a restraining order against me, though he showed no documentation of contact by me, outside a courthouse in the presence of a bailiff, and I lived over a thousand miles away from him. The Court granted the restraining order, which included the seizure of my 2nd Amendment right. I had to hire an attorney to represent me who explained to the Court that I was in a small town in the hills of Arkansas when the process server swore, in what looked like crayon, that he served me personally at the address of my post office box in California.

There are several reasons to allow a person to own a gun. Guns are handy to provide food for your family. Guns are good in the event there is a tyrannical oligarchy or kleptocracy taking ordinary people’s property under the threat of death or arbitrary incarceration, such as during the Holocaust. And guns are good to protect one’s own property and safety while in one’s own home.

The Governor’s Mansion is the Governor’s home. It is reasonable for her to want to protect herself in her own home and to forbid anyone else from bringing a weapon into her safe space.

In fact, I think I’ll get a metal detector for my own house. If you come to visit, leave your pistol at the door.