Roanoke police chief Tim Jones is urging the City Council to curtail open carry within city limits by barring the carry of some of the most popular semiautomatics available.
According to WSLS, some Roanoke residents have complained about open carry of certain semiautomatic firearms “in public.” In light of those complaints, Jones is urging the City Council to curtail open carry. He appeals to the Fourth Amendment as justification for curtailing the Second Amendment, thereby intimating that protections on privacy contained in “[t]he right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects” are an equal guarantee that one person’s disapproval of a certain type of legally owned firearm is a sufficient basis for treating the public domain as if it were private property.
Jones put it this way: “The Second Amendment is part of the constitution. I support the Second Amendment. I also support the Fourth Amendment. As the police chief we are the guardians of the constitution.”
The measure being considered by the city council would not effect concealed carry. So the popular semiautomatic firearms that led to the complaints could still be carried as long as they were carried in compliance with Virginia concealed carry laws. In other words, the guns that certain Roanoke residents complained about would still be there, but law-abiding citizens would have to hide them under their clothing because of Jones’s protest.
AWR Hawkins is the Second Amendment columnist for Breitbart News and political analyst for Armed American Radio. Follow him on Twitter: @AWRHawkins. Reach him directly at awrhawkins@breitbart.com.
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