M.D. Harmon, in his column of March 14 (“Americans are free to flee jurisdictions that violate their rights”), celebrates the decisions by several gun companies to move their operations from states that have passed laws limiting absolutely free access to firearms.

Mr. Harmon apparently regards any limitation on access to guns as an infringement of our sacred Second Amendment rights, even though the majority opinion in McDonald v. Chicago, the 2010 Supreme Court case that struck down Chicago’s ban on handgun possession, explicitly allows laws that “prohibit . . . the possession of firearms by felons or mentally ill” and “laws forbidding the carrying of firearms in sensitive places such as schools and government buildings, or laws imposing conditions and qualifications on the commercial sale of arms.”

But even if laws controlling guns are constitutional, Mr. Harmon and the gun companies find them offensive, and he thinks it is a glorious thing that they can exercise their right to “vote with their feet – and their dollars – by fleeing jurisdictions that violate their rights.”

We can all see and understand Mr. Harmon’s tender regard for the rights of the gun companies. What I would like to know is: What about Trayvon Martin, Timothy Davison, the 26 children and teachers at Sandy Hook School and the thousands of other gun victims every year?

Unlike the gun companies, they had no right, and no chance, “to vote with their feet” by fleeing the jurisdiction of the gun.


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