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Our collective response to mass shootings and their aftermath has become familiar. There’s the impotent resort to “thoughts and prayers” in their immediate wake; the demand from the Right that we not “politicize” what is an intensely political issue; the calls for gun control measures and better investment in mental health; the righteous speeches from politicians; and, at last, all of this anger and sorrow slowly dissipating as nothing is done. Soon, we’re ready to repeat the cycle all over again. One aspect of this ritual is the insistence, again from the Right, that nothing can or must be done to prevent any future mass shootings lest our Second Amendment rights be infringed. Prominent conservatives have weighed in with this message over the past few days, calling for Americans to keep a cool head and not panic, and warning that such incidences of violence are simply the cost of living in a free, open society. One can be totally safe, and one can be free of government intrusion, but one cannot be both. And to an extent, they’re right. Privacy and civil liberties campaigners have been making this same point for years about the impulse to curtail various civil liberties in the wake of terrorist attacks. We don’t want to live in a world of constant surveillance by law enforcement and arrests for pre-crimes. Yet despite the Second Amendment’s specific reference to keeping firearms holders “well regulated” — wording not found in any of the other amendments in the Bill of Rights — you won’t hear many of the conservatives now arguing for an absolutist interpretation of the Second Amendment defending these other, more essential rights with the same fervor. In fact, many of those claiming frequent mass shootings must simply be accepted have spent their careers defending the federal government’s assault on civil liberties when it came to the issue of terrorism.

“We Want To Be Protected Now” On Monday, Bill O’Reilly explained that the Las Vegas shooting represented “the price of freedom,” as “even the loons” have the right to roam free while arming themselves to the teeth for protection. “I can tell you that government restrictions will not stop psychopaths from harming people,” he wrote. “They will find a way.” O’Reilly was singing a markedly different tune in the wake of the September 11 attacks. “9/11 changed everything,” he said in 2003. “We want to be protected now. We’re willing to give up a little civil rights, a little protection under the Constitution to protect our families from killers.” O’Reilly then spent the subsequent years viciously attacking anyone objecting to the Bush administration’s constitution-shredding measures civil liberties. “Every single thing the United States government tries to do to protect us against terrorism, these people oppose and they’ll sue,” he complained in 2005, in reference to the ACLU’s opposition to the Patriot Act, the no-fly list, and Guantanamo Bay. He then called the ACLU a “terrorist group” who were “terrorizing me and my family” and “putting us all in danger.” “Why do so many Americans fail to see that the primary duty of every elected federal official is to protect you?” he asked in 2006. “Some Americans believe you can’t water board captured terrorists even when thousands of American lives are at stake. That is insane, ladies and gentlemen.” He strongly backed the Bush administration’s illegal warrantless wiretapping program. When a judge ruled it was unconstitutional, he warned that “the unintended consequences of the opposition [to Bush anti-terrorism measures] was death,” and wondered: “Does she want people to die?” When the city of Cambridge opted not to cooperate with the Patriot Act, O’Reilly told a city council member on his show that “you’re hysterical in Cambridge,” “you may be seditious,” and that the city was “basically taking steps that could lead to anarchy.” “You’re protesting and you’re undermining the government and you don’t even know if anybody’s rights are being violated,” he complained. Years later in 2011, O’Reilly celebrated when the Obama administration continued the Bush administration’s anti-terror policies, and applauded its unilateral, due-process-free assassination of an American citizen — inarguably the most extreme power a government could claim — as “another big victory for the good guys.” To sum up: when it comes to terrorism, Americans should realize that the primary job of elected officials is to protect them, they should give up some of their constitutionally enshrined civil liberties for this purpose, and anyone who resists simply wants more killing and may even be a terrorist themselves. Putting stricter gun laws on the books in accordance with the Second Amendment’s own wording, however, is a violation of freedom. Sure, O’Reilly more recently softened his views, opposing NSA surveillance in the wake of the Snowden leaks and saying at one point after the San Bernardino shooting that he didn’t think “you can stop this kind of stuff, totally,” especially in a “free society.” (Though he also endorsed the use of the mythical “extreme vetting” of refugees because “protecting Americans is priority number one.”) Yet even with this change, O’Reilly has never been as fervent as he was when he insisted Americans needed to give up their rights and hand the government extraordinary powers in order to protect themselves.