I believe that the second amendment does give people the right to own guns. It just seems to me that there should be some way to close all the stupid loopholes that allow people to buy guns with no background check. I’d even be in favor of requiring people to pass some kind of safety test before buying a gun, like we do for driver’s licenses.
Why some people think the second amendment is absolute and will allow no restrictions just seems insane. The right to free speech does not allow someone to yell “Fire!” in a crowded theatre. Nor does the right to practice your religion allow you to sacrifice humans to your chosen deity.
But some kind of compromise over gun laws is unlikely, when you have people like NRA executive Charles Cotton. Cotton suggested online that one of the slain people, pastor and Democratic state Senator Clementa Pinckney, was partly to blame because he had voted against legislation that would have allowed concealed handguns to be carried in churches. Cotton wrote “Eight of his church members who might be alive if he had expressly allowed members to carry handguns in church are dead.”
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Cotton later removed that statement from his website, not apologetically but under pressure from the mothership, who apparently do feel a need to pay at least some attention to public relations. But it’s the kind of inflammatory and ignorant rhetoric you’d expect after their VP, Wayne LaPierre, recently exhorted their membership to work against electing “another token demographic into the Presidency”, implying a woman after an African American (though we can imagine how he refers to them behind closed doors).
Ironically, as the major demographic (WASP) of the NRA inches towards minority status in this country, we can only expect proportionately more violence, rhetorically and physically, in response to the larger forces changing the political landscape beneath their feet. As the Republican Party largely constitutes the base of their support, it may also be a harbinger of their future minority status as well, at least its far right elements. One can only hope.
IK -like you I believe people have the right to own firearms. I also believe we have a duty to keep firearms out of the hands of people who do not qualify to own them. Those disqualifiers can be temporary or permanent, such as conviction of violent crime. Other conditions that should prohibit firearm possession might be temporary such as diagnosis of certain mental disorders. Nearly every mass gun murder over the past few years from Virginia Tech, to Aurora, Sandyhook, to Charleston SC are examples of individuals who should never had firearms. In the case of Sandyhook and Charleston the criminals received guns or stole them to commit their crimes. In the others they legally purchased them because they had no criminal history.
I think it’s time we look at requiring mental health professionals to report some non-criminal code to law enforcement agencies to where a temporary code is entered into their record that prohibits them from purchasing a firearm. In cases like Charleston, poor judgment on the part of family should be punished as well.
But, all that being said , by far the largest killer of people in the country are illegal firearms possessed by people who cannot legally own them. Tougher policing is required to solve that problem, but we are moving away from that. Since the riots in Baltimore less then 2 months ago, over 45 people have been murdered by illegal firearms and twice that number injured.
“Nor does the right to practice your religion allow you to sacrifice animals to your chosen deity.”
What does that mean Iron Knee? Not sure about jews, but we muslims do it regularly, and specially on eid-ul-adha https://en.wikipedia.org/?title=Eid_al-Adha
Is it typo or something?
I blame victims of gun violence for not wearing bulletproof vests.
Apparently no one has heard of the Serpent Handling of Southern Pentecostalism, while the snakes are not hurt, the do a little hurting of their own. religious freedom in America has limits. Most states have restricted these activities, Kentucky and West Virginia remain the last couple places for this practice legally. Recently in TN a preacher from Ky was pulled over on the interstate and found to have a carload of snakes he had purchased in Georgia. The snakes were confiscated, not on religious grounds but based on cruelty to animal charges. America does a balancing act with religious freedoms as well as everything else.
Thanks Hassan, that was a typo. I fixed it.
That’s what I get for writing stories in the middle of the night when I’m not really awake.
This whole post and the following debate seemed like deja-vu to me. I swear (but I’m too lazy to look) that this topic came up after one of the far too frequent mass shootings with a very similar cartoon, blog post, and discussion.
It’s unfortunate that this happens often enough that I could have that feeling. It’s even more unfortunate that the minority against doing ANYTHING about it is so strong that they will most likely win and we’ll have the exact same discussion again next time followed by the exact same lack of progress.
If what you’re doing isn’t working – do something different.
Scalia, no liberal, wrote in the majority opinion of Miller:
The second amendment includes the phrase, “well regulated.” Has the English language really changed so much that, we can’t begin to fathom what that means?