Notes from MC: Licensed to Teach

Notes from MC: Licensed to Teach: So I guess the NRA says the answer to stop school shootings is more guns, joining the smattering of elected officials who recently have prom...

So, a union thug (MC) gets ALL of the facts wrong about a subject she knows nothing about [and] reduces her vitriol to mindless name-calling to boot, and this is what ostensibly passes for an erudite commentary.  Others who have responded here have already detailed well the list of facts you got completely wrong, so I will give you a few additional ones that a “smart” teacher such as yourself ought to know from high-school history and government studies.  (Perhaps you were absent the day the following was covered):

The level of sheer ignorance and lack of understanding surrounding all things gun is astonishing; especially from the anti-gun or gun-ban advocates.

“Ban” advocates often argue that the Founding Fathers could not have foreseen advances in modern firearm technology and therefore could not have possibly envisioned a society in which “assault rifles” (I’ll discuss the definition later) would permeate the long gun market in America.  Taking this illogical line of thinking to its inevitable end means that the framers of the Constitution could not have seen the impact of the internet, digital communications, radio and television on the First Amendment; they could not have anticipated that Americans could buy a product digitally in one place on the planet and have it delivered to any other place in just a few days and the inevitable impact upon the enumerated Commerce Claus; the point being that though the Founders could not see into the future, the document endures because of the brilliance with which both the Constitution and the Bill of Rights speak primarily to preserve individual liberty and specifically limit the powers of all governmental entities.  These documents are not now nor have they ever been a list of do’s and don’ts for the individual or a list of powers granted to the government.  Conversely, they specifically lay out the limitations intentionally placed upon the government and the powers granted to those whom they govern.  Additionally, Alexander Hamilton explained artfully in “Federalist 28” unambiguously what was meant by including the Second Amendment to the Constitution.  He wrote: “Independent of all other reasoning the safeguard against the use of a national army against the people is because the power of the proposed government is in the hands of the representatives of the people. If the representatives betray the people then the only recourse left is self-defense where the people take up arms against the national force.”  Hamilton’s point has little to do with self-defense and even less to do with hunting.  By the logic of the afore-mentioned argument, if citizens were denied similar weapons as their government armies poses, they would over time be less and less capable of resisting the inevitable tyranny that goes hand-in-glove with political power.

The next fallacious argument that arises from the last is that the government already has an arsenal larger and more destructive than that of the citizenry so we can’t fight tyranny anyway.  This is perhaps the best argument [for] armed citizens.  Statistically there are well over 310 million guns in private hands in this country.  As the government’s appetite for control grows more voracious, it is the prospect of citizens actually fighting back that keeps them in check.  In order to take complete control, the government would have to destroy about a third of its population.  In so doing the remaining population would live under the thumb of tyranny and oppression exactly as those in North Korea, Cuba, Hitler’s Germany, China, and on and on.  It is this reality of guns in our society that checks to a degree how far the power-grabbers are willing to go. 

“Who [needs] a gun that can shoot 30 rounds?”  “You don’t [need] 10 rounds to kill a deer!”  These are simply red herring arguments meant to distract from the real issues at hand.  The Second Amendment is about personal protection of life, property and protection from government tyranny.  Folks who understand this believe strongly that it is their right to be able to fight back, protect and defend their personal property and their country if need be.  Anti-gun people are free to live gun free in their homes and businesses just the same as gun advocates are free to safely possess and defend themselves with guns.  I have ever in my life known only one true pacifist who would allow himself to be beaten to death at the hand of another rather than fight back in self-defense.  So it seems a bit disingenuous for most folks advocating the banning of guns to do so, since they themselves would indeed use any and all means at their disposal to defend themselves or those they love.  The argument about how many rounds a gun ought to have is mute when determining how much protection is appropriate for each individual.  This debate over the number of rounds is not about gun safety at all, it is [only] about anti-gun people controlling gun people; nothing more.

Even the NRA concedes that America needs to control the mentally unstable better.  But the idea that gun people are [all] nuts seems nuttier still.  There is plenty of “common ground” on the issue of improving mental health, but that argument is not about guns; it is only about mental health at the end of the day.

If guns were [only] about killing, then there would be very little left alive anywhere on the planet in a few days’ time.  The most recent analysis from Small Arms Survey by the Graduate Institute of International Studies in Geneva, Switzerland estimates that there were then conservatively (in 2007) 875 million “small arms” in the world.  Other recent estimates put the number of “small arms” in civilian hands in the US at over 310 million, which is just a fraction less than one for every person here.  Guns are not about killing any more than the billions of knives are about stabbing or millions of cars are about running over people.  The human race has got its share of problems and grief and tragedy, but to blame the inanimate object misses the real point, that sick people with bad intent do sick and twisted things.  The condition of the heart or mind is the source of these despicable behaviors not guns.  Reducing the numbers of guns or outlawing the look and features of some guns or reducing the number of rounds in a magazine will not prevent evil from taking place.  In fact, from history we learn repeatedly that confiscation of guns - or a means of the people to fight back - is the first step toward totalitarianism and tyranny.

Finally, there is the question of the “assault rifles” and whether we (law abiding citizens) should or should not possess them.  There has been much confusion and deliberate misinformation surrounding the term “assault rifle”.  The closest accurate definition is that a true “assault rifle” is fully automatic as those used by the military are.  Meaning, hold the trigger down and the weapon fires until empty or released.  ”Assault Rifles” or “machine guns”, under this definition have been banned since the 1934 National Firearms Act that prohibited citizens from owning fully automatic weapons, short shotguns, etc.  Lumping Semi-automatic weapons together with fully automatic ones muddies the water in the discussion, largely because they are functionally vastly different and merely [look] similar.  Semi-automatic weapons have been in the hands of the general public since 1885 when the first semi-auto rifle was introduced.  In 1894 the first semi-auto handgun and finally in 1902 the first semi-auto shotgun was introduced.  Semi-automatic guns have gained popularity ever since and are by far the most widely used guns the world over.  It is ludicrous to believe that you could effectively legislate away this class of weapon without a fight.  And just to be clear, accessories or “furniture” as some call them do not in any way change the characteristics or functionality of any gun.  If you insist that a rifle not have a pistol grip or a collapsible stock or a sling or a flash hider or whatever frightens you, the “furniture” might change but the functions of the gun will not change and bad people will still harm good ones just the same as if there had been no modifications to the gun laws at all.  The caliber of the bullet and distance from which an object is hit is the determining factor of lethality, not the type of grip.

In the final analysis it is the sickness in society that needs to be addressed, not the guns.  Our founders got it right; the Second Amendment protects all of the other ones, for without it there is no freedom of anything else.  So I say to you Mary Cathryn “Knock it off”!