July 31, 2012 12:59PM # On the Perils of Single-Issue Politics By [Roger Pilon](https://www.cato.org/people/roger-pilon) --- SHARE NPR ran a story this morning, “[NRA Targets One Of Its Own In Tenn. Race](http://www.npr.org/player/v2/mediaPlayer.html?action=1&t=1&islist=false&id=157637438&m=157637415),” that nicely illustrates the perils of single-issue politics, although you’d never learn the principle of the matter from the NPR account. It seems that the NRA has launched a $75,000 ad campaign against state Rep. Debra Maggart, a long-time NRA member and avid gun-owner who a year ago had an “A+” rating from the NRA. Her sin? She and several other Tennessee Republican officials opposed a bill that would have allowed employees to keep guns in their cars while parked in their private employers’ parking lots. The NRA’s Chris Cox, [who’s spearheading this political vendetta](http://blogs.knoxnews.com/humphrey/2012/07/more-on-maggart-vs-the-nra-and.html) and, in the process, is supporting Maggart’s tea-party backed opponent, invokes both “our First Amendment right to assemble to petition our government” and, of course, the Second Amendment, seemingly oblivious to the fact that [neither is relevant here](https://www.cato.org/publications/commentary/employers-must-pull-trigger). In fact, the issue could not be simpler: individuals, including employers, have a right to determine the conditions on which others may enter their property. The Second Amendment prevents the *government*, not private parties, from infringing your right to keep and bear arms. If a private party can ban you from his property for *any* reason, good or bad, he can do so for carrying a gun. So too with the First Amendment: it limits what *governments*, not private parties, may do; government may not violate your rights of assembly and petition, none of which is happening here. As so often happens, here again we see how single-issue politics, in the name of liberty, ends up undermining liberty. The tea party should know better. ##### Related Tags [Government and Politics](https://www.cato.org/government-politics), [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/).