The Exceptionalism of the United States of America

Tags

2nd Amendment

I’ve been having a hard time of it lately. If you’ve ever seen Key and Peele the comedy due, you know about Luther, the anger management guy who speaks for the always calm and cool, Barack Obama. I think I need Luther to speak for me, because when I start to write, my fingers start jabbing the keys so hard I think I’ll go through the board.

It’s all well and good to disagree on things, but when lives are on the line, well, stupid really gets on your nerves.

You can imagine the fun I’ve had arguing with gun nuts. Always the same story.

GUNS DON’T KILL PEOPLE, PEOPLE KILL PEOPLE.

Hello? This means exactly what?

Guns provide the mechanism for killing people for people hell bent on killing people. Especially if they want to kill a lot of people very very fast. Your stupid notion that the gun is the not the problem, is just that. . .stupid. You can’t discern the difference between a person who kills someone with a knife and someone who uses a semi-automatic weapon to mow down twenty people.

THE ANSWER TO A BAD GUY WITH A GUN IS A GOOD GUY WITH A GUN.

Yeah? Except that isn’t really true.

See this photo? A good six of the men around Reagan were armed. Hinkley pulled a gun and started shooting. Not one of the armed defenders shot their weapon. Hinkley was wrestled down.

Pulling a gun during a shootout doesn’t work well especially if you are not in a uniform that designates you as a good guy. People don’t want to be mistaken for the shooter, so guess what? They don’t pull their guns much.

WE THE PEOPLE ARMED WITH THE 2ND AMENDMENT ARE ALL THAT STANDS BETWEEN US AND TYRANNY.

This little gem comes direct from the NRA, who have rewritten history in an attempt to turn an amendment meant to insure state militias, turned into a personal right to have any and as many guns of lethal force as you wish.

Read Steven’s dissent in Heller if you want to know the truth. The purpose of the 2nd amendment is made clear by the opening clause: 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.

We are hear talking about the rights of a state to insure its own security by being able to raise a militia of local citizens to BEAR ARMS for the state. The first time the amendment was invoked was by President Washington to put down a local rebellion of citizens against paying a whiskey tax. They were with violence prohibiting the federal agents from collecting the tax.

Washington called upon the governors of a few state to call up their state militias under the second amendment and to enforce the collection of the tax.

In addition, REGULATION is in the text. regulate means that the government can quite obviously pass laws and and rules as to how the amendment actually works.

Madison in a earlier draft of the amendment, included a “conscientious objector clause for those who object on religious grounds to doing military service. Of course Scalia didn’t care about such things.

THIS IS JUST THE FIRST STEP TO TOTAL CONFISCATION.

No it’s not. You have no evidence of this whatsoever. The NRA doesn’t even believe this, but it’s proven to be a useful tool to sell more guns.

Buy them now, before we run out. A local gun store owner in Oregon happily informed us that she had just placed another order for the gun owner favorites: the AK type weapons that are beloved by the nuts. She noted, there is only a small window after one of these shootings and they must take advantage.

One fool explained that when the President pointed to both Australia and Britain as places with no mass shootings like ours,  he was hinting at his intent to confiscate “all our weapons”. I was invited to be one of those who will come knocking and demand your guns. How would I like that job, he deflected.

¶¶¶

It’s all so awful. You ask them for their solutions. They have none, except to buy more guns and wear more guns, and caress more guns. A new tack is to round up unemployed vets and send them into schools to protect the littluns.

Really?

We want vets, many who are suffering from mental issues of their own to work the hallways of our elementary schools? DO WE REALLY WANT OUR BABIES TRYING TO LEARN IN SUCH AN ENVIRONMENT? Do we want weapons in our classrooms? Do we want to accept the ensuing accidents that must happen?

Is this the best YOU can do?

It’s not the best I can do by a long shot.

I once lived in Detroit. I had windows covered with bars, and an alarm system. I looked around carefully before I went out after dark. I did not dally going to my car in the driveway (I stopped parking in my garage when I opened it one more and four teen boys ran out, I having interrupted their theft).

When I moved out of Detroit, I realized quickly that fear was not normal.  I no longer had to lock everything. I no longer had to jump at the “wrong” sound at the “wrong” time of the night. I was no longer subject to sirens and helicopters with search lights. Police running down my sidewalk happened no more.

And I discovered something.

Living in fear under lock and key, was no way to live. Moreover, it was not the way that MOST people lived. I’ve lived nearly twenty years in four different locations since then. I have lived without fear. I live normally.

IT IS NOT NORMAL AND WE SHOULD NEVER ALLOW IT TO BE NORMAL TO HAVE ARMED CIVILIANS WANDERING AROUND “TO KEEP US SAFE.”

The facts are simply this. Crime in the US is at an all time low. We all can recall some anecdotal story that suggests that we are not safe, if we go back enough years. But the reality is that what was once common (the house break-in) is a fairly rare occurrence today. For instance, in 1970, the rate of burglary was about 1,085/100,000. That was down to 670/100,000 by 2012.

You probably don’t need a gun at home to defend it. And if you did, more than likely you would be so excited, scared, and confused at the time that you would not use it successfully anyhow. Why? Because you are not trained to handle such a situation.

Something like 2/3 of the American population doesn’t have a gun. But there are more than 300 million guns. The statistics are clear, those who have guns (white men, over 55, high school graduate only, once married at least, are the most likely to be involved in gun violence. More guns means more violence essentially.

Yes, we are exceptional all right.

In all the ways that no one wants to be.