Sometimes the anti-gun crowd makes our argument better than we ever could ourselves — and the aftermath of the April 25 attempted assassination at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner is a perfect case study in exactly that.
The Complaint That Gives the Game Away
After an armed suspect was stopped at the Washington Hilton before he could harm President Trump, Vice President Vance, or any of the thousands of journalists in that ballroom, the lamestream media’s response was remarkable — not for its courage, but for its inadvertent candor. Hugh Dougherty, Executive Editor of The Daily Beast, went on MS NOW and complained that the security at the event was inadequate, that there weren’t proper searches, that questions remained about whether the arrangements were sufficient to protect everyone inside.
Let that sink in. The Daily Beast — a publication that has run pieces arguing that good guys with guns don’t save lives — watched good guys with guns stop a bad guy with a gun, and its top editor’s takeaway was that there should have been more security. Tighter checkpoints. Better searches. A more thorough government-provided security apparatus.
I have some news for Hugh Dougherty and everyone else making that complaint: you have just handed the Second Amendment community one of the most useful arguments we have ever received, and you did it for free.
Why This Concedes the Bruen “Sensitive Places” Argument
Under Bruen, the government cannot simply decree a location a “sensitive place” — a gun-free zone — without demonstrating historical support for that designation. The sensitive-places carve-out is not a blank check for politicians to post “no guns” signs wherever they please.
My position — one I have articulated in my article in the Georgetown Journal of Law & Public Policy — is that comprehensive security is a necessary precondition before any location can plausibly qualify as a constitutionally permissible gun-free zone. That means limited points of entry, metal detectors, and armed security ready to respond if something goes wrong. The Correspondents’ Dinner had all three, and the system worked.
Now look at the gun-free zones that states like New York, Illinois, and California have been multiplying since Bruen — places that serve alcohol, hospitals, and dozens of other designated locations. None comes with government-provided armed guards. None has magnetometers at the door. They have a sign. Maybe a sticker on the glass.
If a Daily Beast editor thinks Secret Service protection, metal detectors, and controlled access at the Hilton still wasn’t enough security, how does anyone argue with a straight face that a no-guns placard on a bar satisfies the constitutional standard for disarming law-abiding citizens?
Comprehensive Security as a Constitutional Floor
The history bears this out. The traditional sensitive places — the kind Bruen recognized as having genuine historical pedigree — were not secured by wishful thinking. They came with guards, controlled access, and an institutional guarantee that disarming the public was paired with an affirmative government commitment to protection inside. That is the bargain. You give up your means of self-defense; the government substitutes its own protective apparatus. The typical modern “sensitive place” statute does not even attempt that bargain. It posts a sign and calls it a day.
Every statement from a journalist arguing the Hilton’s security was insufficient is now on the record: comprehensive protection is the minimum standard they accept for their own safety. Those quotes will be compiled and proffered in litigation. If elite Washington insiders believe they are entitled to robust security as a precondition for entering a gun-free venue, then ordinary Americans are entitled to no less.
What Beccaria Knew That Gun Controllers Forget
The failed assassination attempt also illustrates another principle — one that predates the Second Amendment itself. Cesare Beccaria, the 18th-century Italian Enlightenment philosopher whose work directly influenced Thomas Jefferson and John Adams, put it plainly:
“The laws that forbid the carrying of arms are laws of such a nature. They disarm those only who are neither inclined nor determined to commit crimes… Such laws make things worse for the assaulted and better for the assailants. They serve rather to encourage than to prevent homicides, for an unarmed man may be attacked with greater confidence than an armed man.”
I have written about Beccaria’s influence on the founders at length in the Pepperdine Law Review, and his words have never been more relevant. The suspect in Saturday’s attack transported firearms across state lines, brought them into the District of Columbia, and violated a stack of existing gun laws — California’s, the District’s, and federal statutes covering interstate transport with criminal intent. Amy Swearer catalogued roughly ten separate laws he broke. Not one of them stopped him.
Gun control laws do not disarm determined criminals. They disarm the law-abiding people those criminals prey upon. Beccaria understood this in the 18th century. The founding generation understood it when they wrote the Second Amendment. The events of April 25 demonstrated it once more.
What Gun Owners Should Take From This
Pay attention whenever a gun-control supporter complains that the security protecting them was inadequate. Screenshot it. That complaint is a concession that safety requires real, comprehensive protection — not paper prohibitions. Every time a state or city tries to expand gun-free zones without providing that protection, those complaints become evidence in the constitutional case against those laws.
The left has inadvertently drawn the line themselves. If the standard they demand for their own safety is robust government security — armed personnel, magnetometers, controlled access — then that is the standard that must be met before the government can strip anyone of their Second Amendment rights. When it isn’t met, the right to keep and bear arms remains fully intact.
Mark W. Smith is a constitutional attorney, member of the United States Supreme Court Bar, and host of The Four Boxes Diner. Watch the original video here.