Notice how quickly the usual suspects squawk when it’s their freedoms on the line:

Is it time to treat the First Amendment just like the Second?

Two stories in today’s Seattle Times best illustrate the hypocrisy of the political left when it comes to the exercise of civil rights – in this case the First Amendment – and might provide an object lesson to anyone favoring restrictions on the Second Amendment.

One article explains that the Downtown Seattle Association and other Seattle business groups complained to Mayor Ed Murray and the city council about the downtown protests after the Ferguson grand jury decision. These protests were launched without permits and “caused significant disruption and impacts to transportation, commerce, jobs, retailers, residents, employees and tax revenues,” the Times reported.

Their lament drew a quick reaction from the Seattle chapter of the National Lawyers Guild, described as “an organization of activist-minded law students, legal workers and attorneys.” In their letter, the Guild wrote, “We are saddened that the Downtown Seattle Association and its partners in the business community do not understand the First Amendment and the right to protest in the most public of places in Seattle — downtown.”

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Why should peaceful protesters be treated any differently in their exercise of the First Amendment than law-abiding, peaceful gun owners be treated in their exercise of the Second Amendment? Background checks for all firearms transfers, including loans or gifts and private sales might just as easily be considered “prior restraint.”

Note to protesters: If you don’t care to be photographed in a public place on the suspicion that you just might be preparing to commit a crime, don’t squawk because gun owners don’t care to have the government recording every time they loan or borrow a firearm, especially to a friend or neighbor they have known for years, perhaps decades, on the mere suspicion that some crime might occur. That’s how Second Amendment advocates could explain why blindly voting for a “universal background check” initiative is insidious. Passing a law that ratchets down on someone else’s civil right is not nearly as noticeable as your own civil rights ox being gored.