"And
that said Constitution be never construed to authorize Congress to infringe…or
to prevent the people of the United States, who are peaceable
citizens, from keeping their own
arms."
~
Sam Adams ~
I
see where the Bush administration has initially indicated support for extending
the Clinton-Feinstein-Schumer
ban on scores of semi-automatic rifles and on magazines holding more than 10
rounds of ammunition that the Clinton Administration imposed
on America back in 1994. I am
seriously disappointed in that decision if it holds.
Call
me radically deranged, extremely naïve or dangerously simplistic. Call me a Second Amendment Absolutist or whatever you like
but I can’t see why we need any gun centric laws—at all.
Laws
against violent crimes such as murder, robbery or assault are already on the
books and do not require a gun be used in their commission to be considered
criminal acts. The only thing any
criminal needs to carry out such deviant behavior is some means of providing a
power advantage over the victim and he could use almost anything for that.
A
criminal can just as easily kill or rob with a knife, a baseball bat or his bare
fists so what difference does it make which gizmo is used to provide that power
advantage over the victim—none whatsoever to my way of thinking.
It’s the act itself that makes such behavior a crime, not the tool
used.
Laws
are needed to deal with harmful deeds inflicted on people by the misfits of
society—those whose behavior deviates from the accepted norm and thus becomes
injurious to others. They are
needed to deal with the behavior that inflicts such harm —nothing more
complicated than that.
Crime
is the result of socially unacceptable behavior and it is the behavior that
determines the crime. The operative
word here is behavior not the implement used by some degenerate. A
criminal can choke a person to death with his own mother’s apron strings as
well as shoot him. Is the victim
any more dead if a gun is used or is the criminal any guiltier?
I think not.
There
are already laws punishing deviant behavior therefore to my way of thinking,
laws pertaining specifically to guns are laws focused on objects incapable of
behavior. A mother’s apron
strings can be just as deadly as a gun if the one exhibiting such criminal
behavior chooses to use them in that way so should we have laws governing apron
strings? Gun centric laws only
restrict, limit, prevent—infringe—upon your right to keep and
bear arms and do nothing to address violent behavior.
Those
20,000 gun specific laws such as limited magazine capacity, rate of fire, barrel
length, registration, licensing, waiting periods, and concealed carry without
government permission as examples, do nothing but limit your right of access to
guns—infringements upon your rights. Such
is not the mark of a free society. What
harm is there in a 15 round magazine or carrying a gun under your coat? It’s when that gun is used to harm others that the crime is
committed and it’s the criminal behavior that is the crime not the gun.
The gun is obviously incapable of behaving in any way whatsoever—but we
all know that don’t we?
Keep
in mind the Second Amendment states, “…the right of the people to keep
and bear arms, shall not be infringed.”
There are no qualifiers to that statement, as “…shall not be
infringed except for…” and you fill in the blank with any of those
20,000 gun laws.
If
I could ask the founders their opinion on this question, I would ask if felons,
the insane or the under aged should be denied access to firearms.
Felons have proven to be unfit members of society and by their own
choices have surrendered their rights to fully participate in our society. The
insane are not responsible members of society for medical reasons.
The under aged, let’s say those younger than 18 for the sake of
argument, are not yet fully responsible because they are still in the formative
years of their lives.
So
call me whatever you like but the laws against murder, robbery, and assault
exist and should be seriously enforced with harsh punishment for violating
them—the implement used entirely irrelevant to the behavior involved.
We should address the behavior of the criminal and let the law abiders
among the rest of us alone—our right to keep and bear arms un-infringed as the
founders intended.
Of
course, such an approach would allow the general population to be fully armed
and capable of resisting an out-of-control government if need be so maybe that
wouldn’t do after all—perhaps that thought just scares the living daylights
out of some politicians. Might that
fear then be the genesis of the 20,000? Remember
the words of Thomas Jefferson, “When
citizens fear their government, you have tyranny; when the government fears its
citizens, you have freedom.”
Just
the view from my saddle…