The right to bear arms?
Tuesday, December 18th, 2012The massacre of twenty children and eight adults (teachers, the mother of the shooter, and the shooter) is a tragedy. In other similar tragedies, gun enthusiasts have warned us about getting too emotional and tampering with a fundamental right guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution’s Second Amendment…so they say. The NRA, well-heeled lobbyist organization that it is, often leads the charge. “Not over my dead body….” Yes, I’m emotional. This time the stats are against the NRA. Twenty children. I repeat: twenty little, helpless, and defenseless children.
The “fundamental right” these right-wing gun nuts talk about is the “right to bear arms.” The Second Amendment 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.” That opening phrase is key: “A well regulated Militia….” The whole amendment has become twisted to the point where certain states have returned to the days of Dodge City and allow concealed carry “for protection,” meaning that people like George Zimmerman can shoot an unarmed black kid and claim self-defense. It has become twisted to the point where anyone can go to a gun show and arm themselves better than SWAT members on a police force, as seen a few years back in an armed robbery in LA (a recent news report on ABC news quoted an FBI statistic: they performed background checks and registered more than 150,000 guns that were sold on Black Friday this year—c’mon people, that’s paranoid, perverse, and obscene!).