excuse the gender bias but hey, I'm defending my 18th century rights here!
My good friend Easy posted this article about "open carry" of firearms in San Diego (all of California) on the Facebook. This kind of thing always makes me queasy.
These fellas (and woman) seem to want to make this about their "rights"--(funny if you really think about the terms "liberty" and "citizen" in the same context): I wonder if the framers had to do it all over if they would consider the 2nd Amendment a mistake--I mean, basically this is a protection for white property owners (not All men, not women) and arguing that this is a act in defense of rights afforded them by the constitution is somewhat contextually incorrect. So, I am against this...heck, I'm not so keen on police having weapons. So, really we should take this to the extreme in our thinking...ALL of us someday carrying weapons and many of them concealed and loaded. Then what?
And really wouldn't it be nice if those standing up for "gun rights" would stand up for Equal Protection in all areas? Let's find some cross-polling on gun rights advocates and the question of gay marriage. How many in the NRA are for the strict enforcement of Equal Protection? If I make a prejudicial assumption I hope you will forgive me.
And I really have to be honest in my strongly held belief that killing happens less frequently if it's less easily accomplished. It takes a very strongly aggressive or deluded human to use a knife or club or one's own hands in the act of deadly assault.
I'm curious as to some more hard facts about this, i.e. how many people in America own guns? Where are they? How many deaths are caused each year by citizens shooting each other with their own guns? Accidents caused each year by guns? Michael Moore, where are you? I'd also like to know the policies of other nations on gun control for comparison, how their culture views violence, stats on shootings, etc.
ReplyDeleteI agree that the 2nd Amendment has a temporal quality. In 18th century America the newly formed nation wanted a guarantee of not only protecting individually owned property, but also of protecting themselves from outside attacks, civil wars, yes?
Sadly, I am not well-versed in any of this! However, gun stats are way HIGH here compared to other Western Democracies (and I'm not sure you're allowed to touch a weapon unless you're in the military in other countries). I think I'll post again and cite the 2nd amendment and discuss it's placement within the amendments.
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