Showing posts with label Founding Fathers. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Founding Fathers. Show all posts

Wednesday, April 12, 2017

How the hell do we keep explaining these gun deaths


There is no way. But at the same time, we still do nothing about it. In January of 2017, Trump made a series of stupid comments on guns and the 2nd Amendment, sounding almost as dumb as the NRA's Wayne LaPierre, about the sanctity of the 2nd, and bullshit like, "...the right to keep and bear arms is a right that pre-exists both the government and the Constitution, noting that government didn’t create the right, nor can it take it away." If he is implying that guns were around before the U.S. was a country, and before there was a Constitution, of course they were. They were used in a war.

But it was the Founding Fathers that felt the need for a 2nd Amendment at a time they still required protection from the British and there was basically no real police force to enforce the laws. People needed to protect themselves and having weapons in the home made sense. It doesn't now. We have a federal armed forces and law enforcement on the local, county and state levels. Sure, people are killed with guns on the street but that is because there are so many guns on the street. Get rid of all the guns and you get rid of the problem. But we know that will never happen. Is there an answer?

Here's an excerpt from a post I did about what the Founding Fathers really meant...
"It occurred to me recently that enough hasn't been said recently about the intentions of the Founding Fathers in the Constitution for the rights and restrictions of gun owners. With individual and mass killings by guns a regular daily occurrence, and the fact that even in light of the horrific number of deaths, including many children, the National Rifle Assn. (NRA) headed up by Wayne LaPierre, still maintain that the right to have a gun is more important than human life. LaPierre bases that right on the 2nd Amendment, given to us by the Founding Fathers. He claims it is inviolable."
And more on the same subject...
"Here's an incident of the typical thinking of a gun nut: In a tirade against CNN’s Piers Morgan, Alex Jones argued, 'The Second Amendment isn’t there for duck hunting. It’s there to protect us from tyrannical government.' Like this government could ever come together long enough to start anything, much less tyranny. It's a laughable argument and there's much in history to disprove the gun nuts. Truth-Out.org also reports first-hand documents from 1789 detail the First Congress' debate on arms and militia detail a constant theme: "the 2nd Amendment was created to protect the American government."
In one of the most egregious acts in the field of journalism, Jan Larson McLaughlin, the Editor of the Bowling Green Sentinel-Tribune in Ohio, was fired for insubordination by the Publisher, Karmen Concannon. The reason, McLaughlin wrote an article about the NRA that was unfavorable but true, re. James Evans, a geology professor, for his email to State Rep. Tim Brown in which he called the NRA a “terrorist organization." McLaughlin found no problem with that and neither do I. But she was fired and the Publisher refused any comments on the matter. Read the editorial!

I am writing this post as a reaction to the most recent murder of, Karen Smith, a school teacher from San Bernardino, California, by her husband, also killing an eight-year-old student standing behind her. He too was was struck by gunfire. Apparently the eight-year-old that was killed, plus the other student who was shot, were simply innocent bystanders. The NRA and its gun nuts will now scream for arming every teacher in the country; guns are already legal with students in many classrooms nationwide. I can just see it now; OK Corral goes to school.

Monday, December 21, 2015

What the Founding Fathers really meant in the 2nd Amendment



It occurred to me recently that enough hasn't been said recently about the intentions of the Founding Fathers in the Constitution for the rights and restrictions of gun owners. With individual and mass killings by guns a regular daily occurrence, and the fact that even in light of the horrific number of deaths, including many children, the National Rifle Assn. (NRA) headed up by Wayne LaPierre, still maintain that the right to have a gun is more important than human life. LaPierre bases that right on the 2nd Amendment, given to us by the Founding Fathers. He claims it is inviolable.

Here's an incident of the typical thinking of a gun nut: In a tirade against CNN’s Piers Morgan, Alex Jones argued, “The Second Amendment isn’t there for duck hunting. It’s there to protect us from tyrannical government.” Like this government could ever come together long enough to start anything, much less tyranny. It's a laughable argument and there's much in history to disprove the gun nuts. Truth-Out.org also reports first-hand documents from 1789 detail the First Congress' debate on arms and militia detail a constant theme: "the 2nd Amendment was created to protect the American government."

It wasn't meant to give some doofus the right to carry around an assault rifle in public, or even have one in the home. This also applies to handguns when it comes to open or concealed carry permits for nothing more than playing cowboy.

Here'a another point from TO.org,  "As a member of a National Guard militia, the 2nd Amendment is more of a civic duty than a personal right. Again, it was all about defense of the state – not defense against the state."
In fact, during that first gun debate, the state of New Hampshire introduced an amendment that gave the government permission to confiscate guns when citizens “are or have been in Actual Rebellion.” To those early legislators in New Hampshire, the right to bear arms stops as soon as those arms are taken up against our "we the people" government.
Gun nuts like Alex Jones are what have turned the United states into the most gun violent country in all the industrialized nations. His thinking, along with the gun nuts at the NRA, especially Wayne laPierre, is what has caused the recent blood baths that are killing innocent people, especially children.


Thursday, June 5, 2014

IT'S TIME TO AMEND THE 2ND AMENDMENT

The title above guarantees that I get the attention of gun owners and their renegade bunch of gun nuts. My congressman, Rep. Paul Gosar, a Republican, says that new gun laws that would interfere with the rights of these gun huggers would be unconstitutional. Like background checks that could have prevented most of the recent mass shooting. Yes, I know, it would also have to include a mental health database, something that Gosar and his GOP buddies are holding up. So, if changing the 2nd Amendment won't work, let's amend it to an interpretation that the Founding Fathers really meant. You know what it says, "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."

A one-sided Court
Former Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens has written a book, Six Amendments: How and Why we Should Change the Constitution. He was, by the way, was against the District of Columbia v. Heller outcome. He says for one thing that Heller didn't preclude the barring of assault weapons. That's a start but his revision of the 2nd is even better: "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms when serving in the militia shall not be infringed." Amen. That will get many of the guns off the street.

Wednesday, May 16, 2012

More calls to repeal the 2nd Amendment

There is another debate going on re. whether to repeal the 2nd Amendment with a pro/con between Steve Zorbaugh and Elizabeth Roberts, both Pennsylvanians, and both very eloquent.  However, Roberts places much of her reasoning against repeal in her interpretation of what the Founding Fathers intended in their amendment plus a general distrust in the American government.  Zorbaugh shoots all this NRA malarkey down and makes a very strong case in favor.

But Zorbaugh starts with an interesting statement that I had to research further.  He said: “There are 788,258 words in a standard King James Bible. The word ‘gun’ isn't one of them.”  That would indicate a direct connection between religion and guns, and I found that there is.  At least in the minds of the gun worshippers.  There is a lawyer by the name of Herb Titus who is part of the Gun Owners of America who draws this parallel between the 2nd Amendment and religion.

The article in the second site, above, exclaims that “…the Tea Party movement emerges out of the confluence of different strands of the far right, including Christian Reconstructionism.”  We all know that TPers are staunch gun rights supporters and gun toters.  Further, “The militia movement and Christian Reconstructionism both contend that our current civil government, most especially the federal government, is illegitimate.” At the very least, scary.

Cass Sunstein, Constitutional Lawyer and U.S. Administrator of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs on repealing 2nd Amendment:

Larry Pratt, Exec. Dir. of GOA said: “we’re not really talking about a right but an obligation, as creatures of God, to protect the life that was given them.”  Now we don’t just go back to biblical days where there is a fantasized association between gun and religion, but according to Pratt it came right from the mouth of God.  More on this in a later post.  It is beyond me where these maniacs come up with this crap but of course the National Rifle Assn. (NRA) comes to mind.

Zorbaugh refutes Roberts’ Founding Fathers drivel in one compact, precise statement: “The justification for gun ownership that existed in 1787 no longer exists today.”  But he follows up with a multitude of other refutations that should make a brainwashed NRA membership think.  But it won’t.  He does acknowledge the need then to have protection against the King of England and against unfriendly Native American tribes that we confiscated our land from. 

But that was over two-hundred years ago.  Things have changed.  The only thing outside one’s God worshipped today is guns, not thrones.

Zorbaugh proclaims: “After 225 years, the Second Amendment has clearly outlived its original purpose.”  He is looking for a new Constitutional Amendment that will value the community’s right to being safe over the demands of the gun bubbas that want to carry their weapons anywhere they want to at anytime they want to.  And the only way this can be accomplished is with stronger gun control. 

One good reason for more control is Philip Cook’s statement that the cost our society pays each year to guarantee gun ownership exceeds $100 billion and is growing annually at an alarming rate.”  This comes from Cook’s book, “Gun Violence: The Real Costs.”

There is one solution affirms the pro-repeal author.  Require gun owners to carry insurance on their weapons just like they are required to do on their automobiles, for potential death and injuries.  This would at least mandate registration which we all know would send the NRA into its next aberration.  It would be worth the try just to see Wayne LaPierre, the organization’s CEO and Exec, Vice President, come off the spool…again.

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