Bang! Wait, don't! No, do, but get his ID!
The Senate voted today to reauthorize a ban on military style assault weapons, much to the dismay of militia groups throughout the country. But beyond the ban, it voted to close the gun show loophole, making background checks mandatory now. Let's look just a tad deeper into our beloved 2nd amendment, shall we?
The 2nd amendment grants us the right to bear arms. Here, actually, is the text: 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. A well regulated Militia. What, pray tell, does that mean? To me (and my opinion is the only one that counts on this page) it means one of two things: (a) an army; or (b) a organized and regulated group of armed people. Why was this amendment put into our Bill of Rights, fitting snugly between our Freedom of Speech and our rights to not have soldiers hole up in your crib? Was it for freedom of hunting? Freedom of skeet shooting? Freedom of shooting pieces of paper with a silhouette of a man on it? No, I don't think so. I think it was pretty much so the soldiers who were killing your people wouldn't come into a complete unprotected area and slaughter your entire town. Or maybe it was so the rapscallions from the next farm over didn't come and swipe all your swine, leaving your family to die of starvation that winter.
I highly doubt that when our forefathers wrote this amendment into our Constitution, they had any idea of the atrocities that these firearms would be part of. First off, they're talking about BAYONETTTES, not M16s. They're talking about protecting your family because your closest neighbor is 2500 acres away. Not kids coming into schools and shooting people. Not 4 year olds shooting their brothers and sisters because Daddy was too drunk to remember to unload the gun. Or to put the trigger lock on. Because guns are fun. And kids like fun.
Guns should not be legal for civilians to own. They should not. No way. Police, fine. Military, obviously. But who is to say that one person is going to be a better gun owner than another. Guns don't kill people, people kill people says the NRA. What about a child? Who is to blame then? The parents? The NRA for promoting guns as safe? The forefathers for being blind as to what this might lead to in the future? The gun manufacturers?
Hunting is a barbaric sport. Forget population control. Stop cutting down the forests where these animals live. The reason they're all over "our" land is because their land is gone. You don't need an Uzi to hunt. Skeet shooting? Come on. It's worth the tens of thousands of gun related deaths that occur each and every year so you can shoot a fucking clay disc?
Get them off the streets. Black market? Cut trade relations with countries who manufacture these things to begin with until we ebb the tide. China shouldn't be trading with us anyway. How is it that we're the only western country with such 3rd world laws? How is it that Europe has such a low violent crime rate? Why is it that the numbers, the pictures and the stories can be in front of us, yet we refuse to see? How utterly American of us.