From Hecatedemeter, some common sense:
When those men wrote the Second Amendment to our Constitution, America didn’t have a standing Army, Navy, Air Force (they could never have imagined!), Marines, National Guard, and Coast Guard. We didn’t have a police force in every town equipped with tasers, drones, heat sensors, electronic spies, and the ability to nab your cell phone and entrap your friends. We can argue, as an esoteric exercise, about whether or not all of those abilities are good things, but they are, right now, facts. We, the people, have turned over to the government, our need for a “well-regulated militia.”
Here’s what I do know.
I do know that no matter how many guns any one person or group may purchase, if the United States government decides to take you out, they are going to take you out. They will, literally, out-gun you. Until you can, Dune-like, employ the family atomics, (not to mention the family chemical weapons, the family heat sensors, and the family ability to cut off water) and, really, even then, you are not going to hold off the firepower of the United States government, which spends more money on weapons than any other country on the face of the globe. Maybe that’s good; maybe it’s bad. But it’s a fact.
I know that letting every nutjob in America load up on automatic weapons is inimical to the “security of a free state.” People can’t be free if they are constantly at the mercy of an armed nut. Ironically, the reaction to the tragedy in Aurora isn’t to limit the ability of crazies to purchase arms. Instead, theaters are going to limit the freedom of patrons to wear costumes. Let’s be clear: costumes. Costumes don’t kill people. Guns kill people. But we apparently can’t limit the ability of nutjobs to buy guns, so we’re going to limit the ability of free people in a “free state” to wear costumes. Some underpaid usher at a movie theatre is going to decide whether or not your pentacle, or your Goth make-up, or maybe just your beard renders you unable to see a movie. Because we can’t tell nutjobs that they can’t buy automatic weapons. And you can now surrender your bodily freedom and allow, again, some underpaid usher at a movie theatre to grope you in order to allow you into the theatre.
I know that letting every nutjob in America load up on automatic weapons is inimical to “a well-regulated militia.” Ask any police force in America what they think about reasonable gun control and they’ll tell you that they are all for it. There’s nothing “well regulated” about letting every nutjob out there buy all the automatic weapons s/he can buy.
Woot!
And pass it on, readers.
Holmes was going after a Phd in neuroscience. His interest was the human brains interaction with, and its ability to differentiate between, reality and non-reality. Holmes had a grant from the federal government to focus on that topic when writing his Phd thesis. Curious.
So what’s to keep the U.S. gov’t from rounding up everyone, town by town, into “camps” and systematically getting rid of us to save resources? i’m hoping that industrial civilization collapses so that the military and police will be in the same boat as everyone else. Also, without electricity (for an extended period) the whole facade falls apart and we’re all back to the Stone Age. Guns won’t do anything for you unless you use it on yourself in the end.
Tom, we sure are entering the Twilight Zone aren’t we. Not ‘you’ all of us.
Your points are well taken. The well-regulated militia thing is a tough concept to get across given the NRA’s stranglehold on politicians and the media.
I still like Chris Rock’s solution. Tax a bullet $500.
I’ve thought this quite often myself. The point of the “well-regulated militia” is to enable citizens to curb government power. Which, in our current world, should mean we all own tanks and armor and helmets with heads-up displays.
And yet the NRA is concerned only about comparatively small arms suitable only for shooting up your neighbors, and which are one of the few things still made by US corporations.
Interesting.
In the 1700’s having a well regulated militia had very little to do with curbimg government power. Back then there was no police force, no national guard and a very small national military. A well regulated militia was required to keep the civil Peace when all else failed. It was the lunatic right who came up with the dumb idea that a well regulated militia was written into the Constitution to curb government power. Like that is even possible seeing that the US military has tanks, airplanes and atomic bombs at its disposal to use against a bunch of rifle toting civilians. Why the average person buys into the NRA’s right wing propaganda indicates just how misinformed the average person is about their own history.