Frankly, I wish I’d never even written that boneheaded amendment. What was I thinking? In retrospect, perhaps it wasn’t such a good idea to drink all that wine right before the convention. All I wanted to do was go home and sleep it off. In fact, I was so bombed, I made a spelling error in my first draft, when I wrote, “the right of the people to keep and bare arms shall not be infringed.” Just think how much better that would have been — you wouldn’t have a constitutional right to own a gun, but you would have the right to pull up your sleeves. But Tommy Jefferson, who was a little OCD, corrected it. Now the damn thing has gotten all misconstrued.
What if James Madison was transported through time to review the state of his Second Amendment Would he be pleased by the predominance of guns in American society? Would he applaud tso many Americans clinging to their guns with unparalleled passion and fervor while showing little, if any, concern for the well-being of others? Would he subscribe to the theory that the occasional massacre (Columbine, Springfield, Red Lake, Ft. Hood, Virginia Tech, Aurora, Oak Creek, ad infinitum, ad nauseum) is the price of freedom?
Or would he look around in disgust and dismay and shout, “WTF??? Have all y’all gone mad?” If he did, he’d have a pretty good point. I can’t imagine that Madison had our current senseless, wanton love affair with guns in mind when he wrote the Second Amendment. It was about allowing a young country under threat from Great Britain the ability to defend itself, NOT allowing the criminally insane to legally purchase enough firepower to shoot up a school, a theater, or a place of worship. And yet here we are.
You can have my guns when you pry them from my cold, dead fingers….
For starters, do you really think you need an assault weapon to protect your home against intruders? How often does that happen? You’re in bed, you hear a noise (which is probably the cat), you grab your assault weapon out of your closet, you pad downstairs in your comfy slippers, you hear the noise again and then you pump 30 rounds into your drapes. Nice going, Dillinger.
Think about it for just a moment. Is there ANY possible need that could be met by allowing a civilian to purchase an assault weapon? What, like you need it to go deer hunting? And how much will be left of Bambi when you empty a clip from your AK-47 into her?
I have a brother in North Carolina who keeps a Chinese-made AK-47 in his downstairs closet. I couldn’t begin to explain why he feels that to be an appropriate thing to do, but this is America. Antonin Scalia has long held that any weapon that can be carried (perhaps even including a thermonuclear device) could be held to fall under the right to bear arms.
WTF??
President Obama said that assault weapons should be in the hands of soldiers, not criminals. To that I would also add, “and certainly not civilians.” Whether or not you call yourself a “collector,” or you’re just an average Joe Sixpack gun nut, no civilian should be allowed to purchase or own an assault weapon, which has one purpose- killing people. An assault weapon is not a means of defense; it’s an offensive weapon designed to kill many people in a small area. Assault weapons are designed to inflict death on human beings. Period. Why, then, should civilians think they have ANY use or need for them at all?
The Second Amendment was never designed to justify the sort of maniacal gun culture that exists in America today. Those, like the National Rifle Association (NRA) and their supporters, who scream, “You can have my guns when you pry them from my cold, dead fingers” should talk to those whose loved ones were take away by random, senseless gun violence.
In retrospect, I should have been more specific and worded it differently, giving American citizens “…the right to keep and bear harmless shitty weapons like muskets so you can maybe shoot something if it’s not moving…”
That’s right folks, I was talking about muskets. One lousy bullet per shot. Half the time, the goddamn thing blew up in your face. Or the bullet got stuck in the chamber. Or it just fell out of the barrel. And even if you could fire the damn thing, it almost always missed the target by a mile.
And, do you have any idea how long it took to load? Ten minutes! There was the powder and the flint and the wadding paper and the ramrod and all this other crap. Sometimes, you had to sit down to do it. You could have knitted a nice pair of socks instead. And if it rained or you dropped it in a lake, you were out of business.
Okay, maybe I misjudged future technology. My bad. You folks seem to have a lot of ingenuity for developing weapons, but where’s the cure for cancer?
Really, how is it that we’ve become expert at developing new and ever more advanced ways to destroy life, yet we’re significantly less committed to saving lives? Why do so many Americans wax orgasmic over firepower, but scream, “SOCIALISM!!” when the subject of universal health care comes up? Yep, that’s right; we have an inalienable right to bear arms, but evidently the thought of a corresponding inalienable right to health care sends some patriots right over the edge.
I love America and I’m proud to be an American…but that doesn’t mean there aren’t times when I’m ashamed of my country. Yes, this is one of those times.
This is NOT what James Madison had in mind, y’all….
