"The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun."
Wayne LaPierre, CEO National Rifle Association
There
have been many articles written this week about renewed efforts to control
firearms among the people. Spurred
on by public horror of the Sandy Hook elementary being turned into an abattoir
by an enraged twenty year old, the U.S. Congress is possibly springing to
action in time to lock the barn doors, once again, too late. Such incompetence is entirely
reminiscent of a bad play; we squirm in our proverbial seats until the dreadful
last act has been agonizingly concluded. Will the fiscal cliff be averted? Will congress pass tax reform? Will assault weapons be banned or
controlled?
Will
we survive their ineptitude?
The
United States is, in many ways, the victim of its own constitution. A document written in the 18th century
the second amendment of which, ratified in 1791, has been subject to
interpretation involving the placement of a comma is just one ludicrous example
of its ossification. That second
amendment, writ large in the time when people carried muzzle loaded muskets, is
simply an invitation for boneheaded senators and even more dimwitted
congressmen to hawk (no pun intended) their hunting skills and present
advertisements of them shooting in some forest in order to impress their
gun-toting constituents, who fear that "big government" will revoke
their license to shoot whatever or whomever they please. And, of course, the American notion that
our freedom will somehow disappear to tyrants should there be some more
legislation restricting gun availability,
this logic stemming from a mentality of frontier justice that is no
longer relevant.
In this case, innocent, tender aged schoolgirls
and schoolboys whose misfortune is now engraved in the tears of a generation of
parents and grandparents, as well as anyone in America whose sensitivity
quotient rises above that of a polar bear. The victims childish images stare out balefully from our
televisions in a horrifying reminder that they now inhabit the crypt, the
victims of Scalia-like logic who is probably right now murmuring, "get
over it," as he did when interviewed about throwing the election of 2000
to George W. Bush.
United
States Constitution
Amendment II
"A well-regulated
Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the
people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed."
Interpretation
of this amendment has been the subject of rigorous debate among constitutional
scholars, the United States Supreme Court and others.
Does
the amendment mean that the militia shall bear arms or that the people shall
bear arms individually? Do
individuals really stand a chance against an army? Do homicidal lunatics who die in a shootout render
sufficient testimony to the folly of such privilege? It seems that they always die in the end, after a shoot out
with the cops or by their own hand, but only after visiting their terror upon innocents. How then, are we safer, because a
madman has access to a Bushmaster military weapon?
Perhaps
the debate is no longer relevant, since the second amendment was written at a
time when slaves were commonplace, women could not vote, and weapons were far
more primitive and could not, by hair trigger, slaughter 30 children and their
teachers in a matter of seconds. Adam and Mrs. Lanza's legacy should be not a
"prepper"(we have to defend ourselves because our government will
not) mentality, but laws that will reduce the incidences of this type of
grotesquerie. These events can
never be eliminated completely, but they certainly can be reduced by
appropriate legislation and if a troglodyte Supreme Court does not declare that
legislation unconstitutional.
Justice Scalia, an avid hunter and Dick Cheney amigo, hunts ducks. Using an assault weapon designed to
kill humans has no place in a modern civil society.
Arguments
that the teachers should be armed and that everyone should tote a weapon ring
hallow; the converse to that argument being that we are less free to speak because we fear that someone may easily shoot us
for expressing our opinion that may not coincide with theirs.
The
gun enthusiasts and the prayer in the schools promulgators share the same
religious zeal and inhabit the same universe. How would Jesus feel about killing innocent children with a
rapid fire Bushmaster?
