July 23, 2010 2:24PM # Liberty Requires Risk By [David Rittgers](https://www.cato.org/people/david-rittgers) --- SHARE That’s the message of my [recent op-ed](https://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=11976) in the *[Daily Caller](http://dailycaller.com/)*. New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s [initial reaction](http://www.politico.com/blogs/bensmith/0610/The_return_of_guns.html#comments) to the *[McDonald v. City of Chicago](http://www.scotuswiki.com/index.php?title=McDonald_v._City_of_Chicago)* decision was to say that *McDonald* would have no impact on government’s ability to keep guns “out of the hands of criminals and terrorists.” This was a reference to [legislation](http://www.thomas.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c111:S.1317:) that Bloomberg supports that would allow the federal government to bar anyone the Attorney General thinks is a terrorist from purchasing a firearm. Not *convicted* of a crime in support of terrorism — that would make them a felon and already unable to purchase or own a firearm. No, being *suspected* of activity in support of or preparation for terrorism means you get the same treatment as if you were a convicted felon or had been involuntarily committed to a mental institution. So much for due process. While *[D.C. v. Heller](http://www.scotuswiki.com/index.php?title=DC_v._Heller)* is the relevant decision (the AG’s double secret probation list is a federal, not state action), the premise of this legislation needs to be refuted. The proposition that guns and gun ownership are uniquely dangerous such that the right to keep and bear arms must be treated as a second-class provision of the Bill of Rights is willfully blind of the other instances where society accepts risk by safeguarding liberty in the face of foreseeable hazards. Justice Stephen Breyer embraced this misguided concept –– that the right to keep and bear arms is an enumerated, but non-fundamental, right that deserves a lesser degree of protection than the rest of the provisions of the Bill of Rights — in his *McDonald* dissent. I counter that notion in this podcast: Related thoughts from Ilya Somin [here](http://volokh.com/2010/06/28/constitutional-rights-that-put-lives-at-risk/). ##### Related Tags [Constitutional Law](https://www.cato.org/constitutional-law), [Robert A. Levy Center for Constitutional Studies](https://www.cato.org/robert-levy-center-constitutional-studies) [![Creative Commons License](/build/cato_2020/images/creative-commons.svg)](http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/) This work is licensed under a [Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/).