Re: Looks like another movie theatre shooting
I don't recall hearing people say this after the 9/11 attacks. Yet, there is strict scrutiny before getting on a plane.
Two issues with this post...
First, you're apparently misunderstanding what I'm speaking about with strict scrutiny. For the government to infringe upon a constitutionally protected right they must do so with a legal justification that stands up to strict scrutiny in terms of the necessity of the action and in terms of the scope of it's impact.
Airports are, typically, federally owned property. Air space, I believe, is considered federally "owned" at a certain level. There is no clearly defined protection within the constitution of ones ability to use a particular method of transportation. Therefore the government has a lower threshold they must to restrict peoples ability to board and fly on airplanes comparative to restricting peoples ability to keep and bear arms. There were arguments regarding the potential violation of the 4th amendment, some of which have been successfully challenged and won in court. However, part of the issue here is the fact that secure areas of airports are often federally owned and then leased land and there's been long standing judicial support for security for entrance onto various federal facilities.
Second, the scope of impact for 9/11 dwarfs pretty much any single, or even a combination, of mass shootings.
Take for instance the DC sniper from a decade or so ago. A "mass shooter" that was over three weeks instead of at a single time. He killed 17 people and injured 10 others. The economic impact of this was estimated around $1 billion dollars due to the fear it inspired over such a long period of time.
Compare this to 9/11. We had over 2,570 people die and over 6,000 injured. The economic cost, not counting the military engagements or government action, was around $180 billion. If you were to factor in the military costs, due to the reality that it was an act of war and not simply an illegal act (Hi military target), you're looking at an economic impact of nearly $2 trillion.
Now while the Beltway sniper was a "mass shooting" of sorts, it's not how you normally think of it since it was over multiple times. How about the Aurora Colorado shooting? Even the liberal Mother Jones only put it around $100 million....or essentially, 0.06% of the impact that 9/11 caused. You would need 180 thousand "aurora's" to have a similar impact to the economy as 9/11 had. That would be 50 mass shootings a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year, for 10 years.
So while there's still constitutional grounds to challenge some of the post 9/11 actions towards the 4th amendment and other things, the reality is that the threat a terrorist attack of that scale poses to the country is exponentially higher than that posed by mass shootings. Thus, there is a more cohesive and reliable argument that the government can put forth in an attempt to justify it's attempted constitutional infringements in those areas as opposed to those relating to mass shootings. And yet still, even in that realm, many people are making the same style arguments against the government action that occurs with regards to guns.
