This is in response to the shooting of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, the nineteen shooting victims, and the six murdered citizens, in Tuscon, Arizona on Saturday at the hands of someone who is clearly mentally ill.
It sounds rather crazy to have such a title to many, I’m sure. After all, isn’t it Democrats who are constantly trying to criminalize gun ownership? And isn’t it Republicans who are constantly trying to keep guns legal?
Yes. Which is exactly why I blame Democrats every single iota as much as the most liberal Democrat blames Republicans for criminals or crazies with guns.
First of all, we have a constitutional RIGHT to keep and bear arms. The 2nd Amendment:
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.
Now, Democrats for years and years have argued that the 2nd Amendment essentially contains a typo, that “militia” should have appeared twice, but somehow the phrase “the people” got stuck in.
But “the people” really means “militia.”
So when you see “the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances,” it really doesn’t apply to citizens. It only really applies to militias. Militias have the right to assemble and redress the government. You “people” just stay shut in your homes and leave the government alone.
And go through your Constitution and make the necessary corrections. Replace every occurrence of the phrase “the people” with “militia.” And see how many freedoms you would lose and just what an absurdly laughable interpretation the Democrats have for the 2nd Amendment.
The 2nd Amendment clearly and obviously provides militias AND the people (i.e., the citizens of the United States, you and me) with the right to keep and bear arms. And then it all but tells the Democrats to keep their paws off our guns (“… shall not be infringed”).
But the Democrats DO infringe. And infringe, and infringe some more.
So we run into a problem: every time Republicans – who actually care about their Constitution – do anything to restrict gun rights or gun ownership, it ends up being a net-loss for guns and for the 2nd Amendment. And every significant act involving a gun becomes the next cause to take away guns, as the following Newsweek article exudes:
“You never want a serious crisis to go to waste,” Rahm Emanuel famously said in 2008. The same goes for a shooting spree that gravely wounds a beloved congresswoman. Congress won’t enact gun control, as it did in the wake of the assassinations of Martin Luther King and Robert F. Kennedy in 1968, but perhaps something positive can come from this.
If Republicans try to make it tougher for criminals or crazies to get their hands on guns, Democrats will use that measure to shut the door all the tighter on every single law-abiding citizen to exercise their constitutional guarantees. As I will show later in this article.
So because of Democrat refusal to recognize the clear and obvious meaning of the 2nd Amendment, we have an impasse. We have an impasse which prevents common-sense laws from being passed.
This is what should happen: Democrats should now and for all time recognize that every single law-abiding American in every single state and in every single town has the right to keep and bear arms. And Republicans should in response begin to help make it tougher to get guns, so that criminals and the mentally ill do not fall through the gaping holes that the intransigence has imposed.
Unless and until that day happens, Republicans will have no choice but to fight every gun law, because they will continue to correctly see that Democrats and liberal judicial activists will continue to use every law passed to prevent “the people” from possessing guns.
Here’s the bottom line: liberals often repeat the principle stated by William Blackstone, “Better that ten guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer.” Benjamin Franklin took it even further, and stated “that it is better 100 guilty Persons should escape than that one innocent Person should suffer.”
And here here. Even though it creates a system in which the innocent too often are denied justice as the guilty go free.
But lets ALSO acknowledge that the same Constitution also clearly affirms that it is better that ten, or a hundred criminals and psychos get their hands on guns than that just one innocent Person should be deprived.
If you liberals like the first principle, quit being a hypocrite and like the second one, too.
For me, I do not want to be forced to wait helplessly for the police to maybe never show up as vicious criminals terrorize – or do worse – to my family. Rather, if you try to enter my home, scumbags, I’ve got something for you.
It is every bit as evil for any society to deny a person (the singular form of “the people”, by the way) to be able to defend himself, or herself, or his or her family, from violence, as it would be to convict innocent people to make sure the guilty don’t go free.
Nor let me fail to mention that the founding fathers clearly intended an armed citizenry to be a powerful obstacle against government tyranny. That the founding fathers would want a tyrannous American government overthrown as much as they would want a tyrannous British government overthrown.
Any good gun law that truly has a chance of preventing criminals or crazies like Jared Loughner from obtaining guns necessarily would depend on a strict registration and licensing of every single gun. And Republicans will RIGHTLY refuse any such registration and licensing until Democrats codify it into the law of the land that such a registry can NEVER EVER be used to take away our guns.
What we need to see is this: a powerful understanding of the 2nd Amendment guarantee of the right to keep and bear arms such that, if any elected official, officer of the court, sworn law enforcement officer, or government employee undermines that law, they will immediately be recognized to have violated their constitutional oath and thereby disqualify themselves for their duties as politicians, judges, lawyers, law enforcement officers, or bureaucrats. And let the anti-gun policies which include heavy taxation and burdensome regulation be expunged.
And when that occurs, then let every gun be registered. Let there be a listing of every individual who owns a gun(s), with every serial number and even with every ballistic sample from every gun, be taken.
If someone is convicted of a felony, or if someone’s mental condition deteriorates beyond a legal threshhold, then immediately the list is checked: ‘does this individual have a gun?’ And if so that gun is removed.
That’s the kind of system we need. And it is the system we cannot have as long as the future question of the constitutional guarantee of gun ownership is in any way, shape or form an open question.
We’ve seen the sorts of laws Democrats have proposed being used against “the people” before in many other parts of the world. We have seen it in tyrannous, totalitarian regimes throughout history. First they demanded the registration of weapons; then they came and confiscated those weapons. And no one could stand up against them, because only they had the guns.
The other thing it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out is that if we pass laws taking away the right to keep guns, only the law-abiding would follow the law. Criminals would not follow the law; I mean, dang, just look up the definition of “criminal.”
Therefore, until our law is clearly and completely understood to guarantee the right of gun ownership by every single law-abiding and mentally sane citizen, you will never see the kind of gun control laws that our society obviously needs.
Which is why I rightly blame Democrats for the lack of gun control laws that would prevent crazies like Jared Loughner from getting their hands on guns.
Democrats, the “living, breathing document, open to interpretation” theory of the Constitution needs to go down the drain once and for all in order for meaningful gun regulations to ever succeed.
Because this is America.
Start Thinking Right 