Dear Democrats, Progressives, Socialists, and Gun Grabbers of all flavors:
I'd like to know, what about “the RIGHT of THE PEOPLE...SHALL NOT BE INFRINGED “ in the 2nd Amendment you are missing.
Look, nobody wants the kind of shooting we just had in Parkland, FL...NOBODY...not even the hated NRA. If you think, however, that more gun laws will help avoid future Parkland-like incidents, think about Chicago. They have the most restrictive gun laws in the country and on any given weekend there can be as many shot and murdered as there were in Parkland...month after month. This is a cultural problem that will not be solved by gun bans. Your proscriptions will only infringe the rights of law abiding citizens and provide no real solutions.
The 2nd Amendment to the United States Constitution does not confer the right to keep and bear arms...it acknowledges this preexisting right and denies the central government the ability to infringe upon it. The amendment is not meant for hunters or sportsmen...this would have been an absolute ludicrous concept for the signers. Just about everyone at the time of it's adoption either hunted or relied on hunting for some of their food source. It is not even about individual right to defend oneself, though this is also a foregone assumption and a preexisting right. Rather, the 2nd Amendment, the very next statement in the Bill of Rights after the freedom speech and religion, was meant to allow The People (corporate) to defend themselves..."a well regulated militia." And, by the way, for a militia, an AR-15 is exactly the kind of weapon you would want. Who do you think was on the minds of the ratifiers of this amendment? Well, the tyrannical central government they had just spent their blood and sacred honor to free themselves of.
The 2nd Amendment to the United States Constitution does not confer the right to keep and bear arms...it acknowledges this preexisting right and denies the central government the ability to infringe upon it.
I know most of you don't want to be bothered with facts and statistics. I know for many of you, how you feel about it is all the proof you need. I also know that for some of you...those behind the scenes...those who have transformed our culture over the last 50+ years so that we have no respect for life, so many of our teens are on anti-depressants, so there is nothing (except guns, being a Christian or a white male) that is taboo...I know that for you, this is about disarming the sheeple. You are the enemy that we need militias to guard against. You are the “enemies, foreign and domestic” that our officials...and our military men and women...swear to protect us from.
I hear you saying, “Oh, that's just a lot of paranoid fantasy brought on from watching too many movies.” But I say, the whole history of the world proves you wrong. Large, centralized states move toward control and tyranny more often than not. But, in your magnanimity, you say, “Okay, even if that were true,”patting me on the head, “what do you think a bunch of rednecks with guns can do against the might of a modern military power? You would have no chance anyway, so give up your guns...for the children.” To which I would have to point you to the cave-dwelling Afghani civilians who thwarted the two most powerful empires of modern times, the USSR and the USA.
The United States of America was founded on the Rule of Law, and the bedrock of Federal Law is the Constitution. This document is a list of limited and specific powers given to the central government, and to make sure this was understood, we have the 10th Amendment:
"The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people."You see, it doesn't matter how you feel about guns. The RIGHT to keep and bear arms is a preexisting right that has been acknowledged and codified in the bedrock Law of the Land. You don't get to change it through social media, through protests, through crying on TV. We all want to avoid another Parkland. But let's look for real solutions. I know, I know...that's too hard. Blaming the guns is just easy, and convenient. But if you really care, like you say you do, let's ask the important questions, like: Why are all the mass shooters on psychiatric drugs? Why are so many gun deaths involved with the prohibition of recreational drugs? Why has our culture become so narcissistic that we would rather discard life than be inconvenienced? The answer to these questions, and many more about our culture, will go much farther toward protecting our children than taking guns from law abiding citizens.
And, one more thing...If the government can deny my long-held right to arms, it can deny your right to free speech, or assembly, or the right to be protected from unlawful searches. If they are allowed to do it to me...they can do it to you. The Left used to understand this.
“They that can give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.” ~ Benjamin Franklin
“But a Constitution of Government once changed from Freedom, can never be restored. Liberty, once lost, is lost forever.” ~ John Adams,