Written by The New York Times ran an interesting opinion piece about the Supreme Court’s agreement to review the Second Amendment for the first time in 70 years. All parties are hanging their arguements on what our founding fathers meant with their punctuation. (I don’t know what the court would do with a typical text message today.)
Obviously, any change in the meaning of this amendment could have far-reaching ripple-down effects in all fifty states and countless cities and counties (depending on what voters wanted.)
Click Here for the story
Darn that preamble…
Darn that preamble – it confuses people who have a poor command of the English language.
Ramblings of a liberty seeking individual follow – skip this post if you’re a safefy oriented individual.
An unarmed society is a fearful one – afraid of it’s own government.
Personal Firearms aren’t for powerful and educated people like me.
They’re for the battered housewife. They’re for the gay couple. They’re for the people who the government picks on. They’re for the immigrants that can’t understand the 911 operator.
There’s a reason with Stalin, Hitler, Mao, and Pol Pot disarmed their citizens before they killed millions of them.
As for safety – even though thousands are killed by personal gun accidents – remember millions have been killed by evil governments that went on murderous rampages after they own citizenry couldn’t defend themselves. Liberty does have a price.
While I voted for Bush – I do worry about the possible slide to something evil if “emergency powers” were declared in response to a terrorist attack. If some jack booted thug starts trying to round up any of my arab neighbors, they will have to get though me and many people like me.
Re: Darn that preamble…
Maybe they meant the right to bear arms, so we could defend ourselves from bears? Or maybe it wasn’t spelled right — it should have been the right to bare arms — the Founding Fathers weren’t really fond of those lengthy woolen coats.
Re: Darn that preamble…
For many of the reasons you mention, I generally feel more secure with the idea that the citizens of our nations can keep their own arms. I think it does provide valued security in terms of keeping the government from going rogue. It also provides a final, impenetrable protection against outside invaders. As my son points out…if the US is struggling so much to get Iraq under control, can you even imagine the trouble a foreign force would have trying to dominate the United States citizens? It would be impossible. This is good for piece of mind.
Relative to protection from local bad guys, I don’t feel the need as much as some people to rely on my own firearms. I have found that when I have called the police in a real emergency, they are at my home in less than two minutes. They come in force, wide awake, guns already loaded, and extremely well-trained on how to use them. And, with a half dozen residents in my home, each with their own cell phones, nobody is going to cut us off from the police.
But I can see where people in outlying areas would have a different situation. And people who live alone, or are being actively stalked by a violent ex, or have been repeatedly victimized, or any number of other circumstances might feel quite differently than I do about this. And I support their right to protect themselves.
I would like to see less energy spent on debating the right of the people to keep arms, and more energy spent cooperatively determining the appropriate way to keep them out of the hands of dangerous criminals and the mentally insane. I think we could work on this together as a nation if law-abiding gun-owners did not have to worry about losing their rights to keep arms.
Re: Darn that preamble…
I agree 100%…..The Renton police *are* very fast… generally, one really doesn’t need a personal gun if you live in city proper.
There are already really good laws on the books for keeping guns out of the hands of nut-jobs – we just need to enforce them better. Thankfully, guns are typically valuable, so a lot of them are kept off the street when said nut-job pawns them to buy drugs or booze.
It’s too bad we don’t have mandatory military service to give just about everybody some firearm training, and a healthy respect for them as well – Renton is home to a good gun club though that can show you how to properly respect and use a weapon.
There really is a risk that our beloved USA could turn nasty – a depression, a terrorist attack or just sliding into class war could push us over to tyranny. It’s good to remember that your typical German or Japanese of the 1930’s was a decent and honorable human being. Ten years later they were slaughtering millions of people. It could happen here, and we need the common citizen to hold ultimate power.
A lot of gun owners are frustrated – when someone legislates their ownership, a lot of gun owners have the thought in their head that this “is the beginning” of the tyranny. They feel that if they don’t oppose the seemingly innocent new laws that they will have failed future generations.
For an interesting though – there are a few towns that have mandated that all capable adults *must* have guns. Check out this:
http://www.rense.com/general9/gunlaw.htm
Basically, a town did this and the crime plummeted. Criminals don’t like armed victims.
Food for thought.