In the wake of the tragic shooting in Aurora, Colorado, it is time to take a long, hard look at the role of guns in our society. This is not about politics but about pure common sense.
Let's start with the simple facts: a gunman, who is most likely insane, went to the front of a packed movie theater during a midnight screening of The Dark Knight Rises and opened fire on the crowd with assault weapons. A dozen people died and dozens other were injured and probably traumatized for life. A disgusting act that has shocked the nation, but who is to blame for what happened?
The liberals would say that it is the NRA and the gun industry, who make it absurdly easy to secure assault weapons in the United States, including over the Internet. The conservatives in turn would say that it is not guns but people who do the killing. Literally speaking they are correct, but if the essence of what the conservatives claim is true, then the reason we have crazy massacres in this country is because Americans are a bunch of homicidal maniacs with no impulse control; and if that part is true, then should we really allow this same crackpot citizenry to carry firearms? You see the problem?
The Second Amendment of our Constitution was meant to protect us from harm, but had the Founding Fathers known back then that the proliferation of guns would put us in harm's way today, I bet you anything they would have put safeguards in place to prevent abuse. The right to defend oneself makes sense but that should not encompass the right to own weapons of mass destruction, or to endanger the welfare of society. The belief that we need to stockpile guns of every kind to protect us from our own government is a sign of deep paranoia and madness. And to the people who think that way, let me ask you this: do you really believe that if the U.S. government decided for some reason to direct all its military might against you , you would stand a chance against them?
One thing that I do agree with conservatives on is that violence does not stem from any one factor alone, including guns. People do kill people (even if the easy availability of guns facilitates and possibly encourages the violence), and often the reasons are mental or emotional. There is a strong culture of aggression developing in America today which is pretty psychotic. You can see it when you accidentally bump into a stranger on the street, you can see it on the highway when someone explodes in road rage, you can see it in a bar when knife-fights break out over the smallest things, you can see it on the Internet when people start attacking each other in profanity-ridden tirades, you can see it on television shows that glorify mobsters and biker gangs, you can certainly see it in our political landscape, and you can even see it in 8-year-olds who exhibit large amounts of "attitude." Something is very wrong here.
But whatever the contributing factors -- guns, mental health, the effect of media violence, or something else -- a nation of heavily armed citizens is definitely not the answer.
I know Americans (or least some of them) love their guns and I also understand that they like the idea of being able to keep a weapon for self-protection or hunting. And there is no doubt that the majority of gun owners are law-abiding citizens. But once again, there is a huge difference between owning a single handgun to protect your home or a rifle to hunt and owning a dozen high-powered assault weapons with high-capacity clips. Those are guns used to kill large numbers of people in short periods of time, so what possible rationale is there for private citizens to own them? There is none, and the Second Amendment was not meant to justify such a thing. In fact, the NRA's support of this shows just how perverted they are and betrays their true agenda, which is to protect the sales of their financial patrons -- the gun manufacturers.
Sure, not every incident of violence can be averted and there are always unforeseen factors that play into these things, but when you see a pattern emerging, you cannot just stand back and do nothing. It is a fact that we have serious problems in our society, from mental illness and sociopathy to a violent culture, and those are all things that we need to address without delay, but when you combine those problems with weapons of mass murder, you get a lethal cocktail of destruction. Restricting the availability of guns will not alone get rid of mayhem, but it will at least give us some breathing room to address the root psychological causes of violence.
The deaths of innocent people should never be a political issue or even an ideological one, but it is a human issue and as such, demands our open-minded consideration of the factors that contribute to it -- even if the conclusions we reach challenge our personal beliefs and make us uncomfortable. Just because you believe in the right to bear arms does not mean that you have to follow the NRA's playbook or that you cannot support sensible gun laws. The Second Amendment was designed to ensure our safety, but the way it is interpreted by the gun lobbies endangers our safety instead. As a patriotic American, does that sound right to you?
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Rev. James Martin, S.J.: Gun Control is a Religious Issue
Eliyahu Federman: Gun Laws and Drug Laws Aren't Working
Russell Simmons: The NRA Ain't Gonna Punk Me!
These 4 quotes add great perspective to the 2nd Amendment.
"No Free man shall ever be debarred the use of arms." (Thomas Jefferson, Proposal Virginia Constitution, 1 T. Jefferson Papers, 334,[C.J.Boyd, Ed., 1950])
"The right of the people to keep and bear...arms shall not be infringed. A well regulated militia, composed of the body of the people, trained to arms, is the best and most natural defense of a free country..." (James Madison, I Annals of Congress 434 [June 8, 1789])
"A militia, when properly formed, are in fact the people themselves...and include all men capable of bearing arms." (Richard Henry Lee, Additional Letters from the Federal Farmer (1788) at 169)
"What, Sir, is the use of a militia? It is to prevent the establishment of a standing army, the bane of liberty.... Whenever Governments mean to invade the rights and liberties of the people, they always attempt to destroy the militia, in order to raise an army upon their ruins." (Rep. Elbridge Gerry of Massachusetts)
A firearm purchased on-line is subject to the same rules and regulations as when it is purchased from a local brick and mortar gun store. The firearm MUST be shipped to a local firearms dealer (who will charge a fee for the service). The local firearms dealer will hold the weapon until the buyer passes a government run background test, and until any required waiting period is over.
Reasons why a person would buy a firearm on-line, slight discount in price (once local seller fees and shipping are taken into account), or greater product availability than local gun stores, NOT to circumvent any existing laws pertaining to the purchase of firearms.
Everything you said was spot on. I have been through the process many times.
In 2008:
37,985 people died in Motor vehicles
31,116 people died from poisoning
12,179 people died from firearms
http://webappa.cdc.gov/cgi-bin/broker.exe?_service=v8prod&_server=app-v-ehip-wisq.cdc.gov&_port=5081&_sessionid=QGAyPGviM52&_program=wisqars.leadcaus10.sas&log=1&rept=&State=00&year1=2008&year2=2008&Race=0&Ethnicty=0&Sex=0&ranking=20&PRTFMT=FRIENDLY&lcdfmt=lcd1age&category=INJ&c_age1=0&c_age2=0&_debug=0
In 2008, 825,564 legal induced abortions were reported to CDC
http://www.cdc.gov/reproductivehealth/Data_Stats/Abortion.htm
Please read the contemporary writings of the Founding Fathers when they declared independence and gathered together to write our Constitution. Your thoughts on this matter are the exact opposite of the truth.
Knowledge is power, and I strongly recommend that you gain the knowledge to truly understand our history and why the Founding Fathers thought that the right to keep and bear arms was so important.
"We support sensible gun laws, like increasing the ability for law-abiding citizens to carry concealed weapons, but the anti-gun rights politicians propose only nonsense like magazine-capacity limits and "assault weapon" bans."
Seriously? So gun laws that prevent you from buying weapons of mass murder are not sensible? Let me say this once and for all - the right to bear arms does NOT justify stockpiling weapons or owning heavy duty weapons. If you interpret the 2nd Amendment that way, then you are perverting the very spirit of our Constitution, which was certainly not to encourage a militant, violent culture!
You must also be able to explain why your claim should be believed despite it being demonstrably contradicted by established law. Please do so.
It isn't the role of "the gun lobbies" to interpret the Second Amendment, that role belongs to the Supreme Court. This is what they said:
SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES
DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA et al. v. HELLER
No. 07–290. Argued March 18, 2008—Decided June 26, 2008
Held:
1. The Second Amendment protects an individual right to possess a firearm unconnected with service in a militia, and to use that arm for traditionally lawful purposes, such as self-defense within the home.
(a) The Amendment’s prefatory clause announces a purpose, but does not limit or expand the scope of the second part, the operative clause. The operative clause’s text and history demonstrate that it connotes an individual right to keep and bear arms.
No it won't. There are already over 200 million firearms in circulation in the US, you can't really "restrict the availability" of them any more than the government has been able to "restrict the availability" of illegal drugs. All you will succeed in doing is disarming and infringing on the rights of the law-abiding.
-- "The deaths of innocent people should never be a political issue"
Then why are you politicizing them by pushing for "restricting the availability of guns"?
-- "Just because you believe in the right to bear arms does not mean that you have to follow the NRA's playbook or that you cannot support sensible gun laws."
We support sensible gun laws, like increasing the ability for law-abiding citizens to carry concealed weapons, but the anti-gun rights politicians propose only nonsense like magazine-capacity limits and "assault weapon" bans.