certain kinds of political speech and certain kinds of involvement in the political process has to precede any reform of guns or a number of other areas of our economy and political life.
It would be perfectly possible for the federal government to pass a comprehensive bill requiring corporations to register with the federal government rather than with the states. That bill could limit the rights of corporations and insure that they do not enjoy anything like the rights of humans.
The Court differentiated in the past between commercial speech and other kinds of speech, with political speech getting special protection. While for individuals, the strict protection for political speech makes sense, it is hard for me to understand how a corporation with its special kind of self-interest and sometimes very great resources should enjoy that kind of speech protection. My thinking is that a corporation's speech is necessarily commercial at its basis. And speech intended to serve its corporate and commercial interests should not enjoy the protection that speech that is uttered by a human being who is not a corporation should. The human being is more likely to speak with the motivation to protect human values. The corporation is, almost by law, required to support speech that protects the corporation's values.
The speech of the gun manufacturers is that kind of speech. It is intended to protect the sales of guns and not the human value of preventing massacres.
= new reply since forum marked as read
