Just a Typical Day... (7) by SeanMartin
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Description
We're leaving this storyline here because it's not one that can be easily wrapped up with a few cloying statement. But a few observations, if I may...
I find America's near obsession with the Second Amendment to be both infuriating and perplexing. The Constitution has had a lot of amendments added over the years, all dealing with freedom of press and freedom of speech and freedom of association... and the US tends to play loosey-goosey with most of them. Sure, you have freedom of speech — until someone proverbially shouts FIRE in a crowded theatre. And you have freedom of the press — until it escalates into printing death threats and calls to violence. Point is, no amendment is treated as absolute. They all have borders beyond which you do not cross...
... except for the Second. Talk about curbing its presumed powers, and you're seen as a traitor to the Things That Make America Great. Suggest that some common-sense limitations be put in place, and you might as well admit that you enjoy setting babies on fire for fun. Reading some of the comments from the more strident gun activists, I sometimes get the impression that anything short of a shoulder-born surface-to-air missile launcher should be available to anyone who wants one... and maybe we can take a look at that launcher as well, eh?
Thing is, the gun activists love to talk about the fact that gun-related violence has gone down over the past few years. Yes, it has. But the intensity in which that violence is put on display on a near daily basis more than makes up for it. Every day in America, almost forty people are killed by guns... and probably over something as mind-numbing as getting dumped by your girlfriend. Or someone looked at you the wrong way. Or you were wearing the wrong kind of clothing.
I dont know what the answer is, folks. But I do know that until people start treating the Second the same way they treat all the other amendments and put some common sense limitations on its now unfettered power, America will continue to be exceptional in one way that it probably would not prefer.
OK, enough of the soap box. Back to some fun stuff tomorrow.
Comments (2)
The Second Amendment has been twisted to suit the needs of the gun lobbing groups. It was intended to give the militia the right and DUTY to defend the US, not the willy-nilly knee-jerk no-rhyme-or-reason ownership laws that have been enacted today. What they are defending today is crazy.
Victorian England invented the NRA. There were no gun control laws in Victorian England. You can download an NRA news thing from Google Books where Queen Victoria starts of an NRA meet with the first shot. You can find it listed in one of my Bibliographies at Amazon author Stephen Henry Huff. It was against the law for the police to carry guns. Sustained moral leadership and social reforms led by people like Carlyle, Dickens, and Bulwer-Lytton reduced crime under the Victorians. Gun control was instituted in England in the early 20th century out of fear of socialist or communist revolution. After a hundred years of gun control on an island nation with a powerful navy, the criminals are so well armed that they are now discussing arming the police force for the first time in its history. In the US firearms violence graphs with the size of the state. The more square miles in the state the more firearms violence. This is because size correlates with history, the date they came into the US. Texas and California graph next to each other in size and firearms violence. California has among the most restrictive gun control laws in the US and Texas among the least. All the laws in California make no difference, except to make guns more attractive to emotionally disturbed individuals and cause more mass shootings in California than in Texas.
True, everything you said. But let me add one other thing. The US almost flat out refuses to put any kind of ban on assault weapons. It had one, and it let it die because of intense NRA lobbying. "Only criminals will have assault weapons!" they shouted... except they never quite answered the question of just where these criminals would be getting them. Right now, wrongdoers get their weaponry from two main sources: gun shows and states with lax gun laws. Just because California has tighter restrictions doesnt mean squat when you can go across the border to Arizona and basically buy anything you want with virtually no questions asked.
But something as common sense as a universal gun control law is seen as another OMG THEY'RE TAKING OUR GUNS AWAY! moment. And so the bad guys go find their weaponry in perfectly legal places, and no one seems to care. America couldnt even get it together after Sandy Hook — you actually had people saying it was a hoax, something the government devised so it could take away your guns. When folks put their penisprops ahead of their children, then it's really time to think about what one is saying.....