The Second Amendment has a friend in the First Amendment, something Sen. Edward Markey (D-MA) may not fully appreciate.
In the Bill of Rights, the Founders ensured Americans would retain those human and civil rights not lent to the government in order to form a more perfect union. Among them, the First Amendment stands for its protection of religious liberty, as pushing back against government’s encroachment into things that are properly left to our houses of worship. For its part, the Second Amendment makes clear that government officials shall not infringe upon the right of its citizens to bear arms.
Of course these amendments have not stopped lawmakers from trying to encroach upon precious liberties. Most often those encroachments come separately. Increasingly, they come together.
Soon after the U.S. Supreme Court rejected New York’s unconstitutional restriction of the Second Amendment in its 2022 New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen decision, the State Assembly passed legislation making it unlawful to carry a firearm in places it deemed “sensitive,” including houses of worship. While the legislature made the decision for its houses of worship, it left to individual business owners the decision as to whether secular businesses would permit individuals to carry a firearm on the premises of their business.
New York officials made decisions concerning the Second Amendment that the First Amendment requires be left to pastors, priests, or rabbis. Business owners, though, could decide for themselves.
The double standard seemed obvious, even to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. In a decision finding the law violated both the First and Second Amendments to the Constitution, the appeals court observed: “It is hard to see how the law advances the interests of religious organizations, as a whole, by denying them agency to choose for themselves whether to permit firearms.”
It seems, Sen. Markey, along with co-sponsor Laphonza Butler (D-CA), may have missed the memo. Mere days after Houston’s Lakewood Church security team ended a gunman’s lethal threat to men, women and children gathered peacefully for religious worship, the senators introduced S.3589. Their bill seeks “to prohibit unauthorized paramilitary activity.”
Whatever the senators mean by “paramilitary activity,” the scope of their bill sweeps in the good with the bad.
Under Sen. Markey’s proposal, the Lakewood Church security team would constitute a “private paramilitary organization.” And, if they like hundreds of other similar security teams in houses of worship across the country, were to “publicly patrol, drill, or engage in techniques capable of causing bodily injury or death,” they would run afoul of Sen. Markey’s legislation.
Under that definition, George Henry Boughton’s 1867 painting entitled “Pilgrims Going to Church” depicts, not a peaceful parade of priest and parishioner, but a “private paramilitary organization” with blunderbusses in hand publicly patrolling the snowy woods, “capable of causing bodily injury or death.”
Now exchange the snowy woods and blunderbusses for a mega church and permitted concealed carry. Many churches have security teams in place, teams that often practice techniques to end an active shooter threat, drill worst case scenarios, and maintain a public patrol of the worship services, hoping to stop an active shooter before they can become a problem.
Security teams for our nation’s houses of worship exist for good reason. A recent report indicates violence against the nation’s houses of worship is on the sharp increase. Common sense agrees. Whether it is the recent tragedy at Lakewood Church, the needless death of 11 congregants at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh, or repeated acts of vandalism in Memphis, security teams inside a house of worship seem an unfortunate necessity in the modern era.
But, should a house of worship’s security team—what Sen. Markey labels a, “private paramilitary organization”—lethally end an active shooter’s reign of terror, they could face criminal penalties and civil lawsuits from both the U.S. Attorney General and private citizens.
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