COMMENTARY: Licensing journalists? Sadly, some might take this appalling idea seriously

Last week, he got plenty after a bill he has drafted that would require professional journalists to be licensed landed in the headlines. News of the bill went beyond state lines to national journalism organizations and publications.

He was waving a red flag at a bull and he knew it. After spending time and taxpayer money having the bill drafted, he told some media outlets he was just making a point; he didn’t want the bill to pass and was just countering media opinions that oppose the bill he really wants. That one would repeal Indiana’s requirement for people to be licensed to carry a handgun.

The Lucas rationale: If you want to license my Second Amendment rights, why shouldn’t I be able to license your First Amendment rights?

Lucas has taken an absolutist stance that government can’t require licenses for gun owners unless it can also require licenses for the right to press freedoms. He’s just being provocative, he told some in the Indianapolis media, saying he actually isn’t for either.

“Everybody should be appalled (by the bill),” Lucas said in an interview aired on WRTV Channel 6. “I’m highlighting the licensing of a constitutional right. Society has become accustomed to that exact very thing. But if we allow the licensing of one constitutional right — even one — that means the floodgates are open for something like this to happen.”

While a few people might find the question reasonable, lawmakers and the courts have never approached the two amendments exactly the same way. Nor should they. Neither First Amendment freedoms nor Second Amendment freedoms are absolute, and lawmakers and courts have agreed upon ways to restrict both in their own way.

Many states, including Indiana, have placed some restrictions on guns without running afoul of the Second Amendment. Though a landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision of 2008 strengthened the right of individual gun ownership, the Court since has refused to review dozens of lower court decisions that have upheld local, state and federal gun laws, including some that pertain specifically to gun permits or licenses. Courts have also supported government’s right to forfeit a person’s ability to legally have a gun based on a prior bad act.

Government can restrict gun ownership, and courts have concurred time and again.

Regarding the First Amendment, laws have been passed that restrict content that is produced — libel laws and privacy laws, for example, or laws that forbid speech that incites violence. But government has never and should never be allowed to decide who can speak and who can’t, who can convey information and who can’t, who can report news and who can’t.

Lucas got one thing right: Just suggesting it is appalling.

He’s played in to the Trumpled national fiction that freedom of the press is somehow unpatriotic, something to belittle, demonize or outright oppose.

Steve Key, director and general counsel for the Hoosier State Press Association, suggested to the Indianapolis Star that using the legislative process to weaken press freedoms can cause long-lasting damage.

“There is a danger in that if you continue to undermine the institutions and the balances of these institutions that have worked so well for us over the past 200 years, there can be damage that can be difficult to repair,” he said.