The Second Amendment

Last week a 20-year old took hundreds of rounds of ammunition in high density clips and a semi-automatic machine gun into an elementary school in Connecticut.  He shot 26 people, mostly 6 year old kids.

It’s senseless.  It’s insane.  It’s an act of mental illness, evil or both.

The thing that really drives me nuts is the advocates for guns who use the Second amendment as justification for their point of view. Here is the text from the constitution:

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.

The first 4 words create the reason to “bear arms”.  Do we have militias anymore?  What is a militia anyway?

From Merriam-Webster:

  • a part of the organized armed forces of a country liable to call only in emergency
  • a body of citizens organized for military service

I think the key in the amendment and the definition is the “well regulated” phrase.   I see the word organized in the definitions.

If the word “well regulated” is literally right there int he first 3 words of the amendment  how can the NRA (National Rifle Association) be so against regulations?  Nowhere in the amendment is the right for mentally-ill 20-year old loners to have semi-automatic weaponry. This is the opposite of regulation.  The second amendment is for regulated militias.  Not hunters, not psychopaths, not for regular citizens to protect their homes, not for criminals.  They are for militias.

School shootings keep happening.  They are beyond tragic.  I just hope the courts and congress can get their heads out of their asses long enough to change things and regulate these weapons.


Comments

4 responses to “The Second Amendment”

  1. Doubt this will reach you as I didn’t use a real email address. But “gun control” and regulation are not the issue. That is treating the symptoms of a tragedy and not the cause. Case in point – alcohol is a regulated legal substance… how many deaths does that rack up per year? Same could be said for most hard core narcotics. I love your blog and have been following it for a long time… so I don’t mean any disrespect…. but hopping on the gun regulation bandwagon solves nothing. Even if it were illegal for private citizens to posses guns, this thing would likely still happen. Are we just supposed to keep taking away rights, no, any object that might be used to harm another individual? I think we need to move past the “safety scissors” era, and start taking responsibility for the deeper issues instead of rounding sharp corners when they are found to be potentially dangerous.

  2. Glen Lipka Avatar

    You don’t need to be Anonymous. Nothing you said is offensive. I strongly suggest people own up to what they say online.

    Yes, there are root causes like how we deal with mental illness in society. However, that wasn’t my point. My point is the the second amendment doesn’t say, “Everyone should have an Uzi!” It says well regulated militia. The big difference between guns and drugs/alcohol is that no one ever went into an elementary school one afternoon and killed 26 people (mostly 6 year olds) with a keg of beer.

    What’s the difference between a steak knife and a nuclear bomb?

    You can kill millions of people with each. The bomb would just do it quicker. Yet, I don’t think we should give everyone a nuclear bomb. I am not sure if the NRA agrees with me or not.

  3. If Alcohol could be eliminated, it would save hundreds of thousands of lives, but it can’t be because it is too easy to make at home, so that comparison is irrelevant. And if assault weapons were illegal it wouldn’t solve everything, but it might help just a bit. And I’m not talking about the 20 children that were just murdered, but the over 8,000 Americans who are killed every year due to gun violence.

    Comparing guns (designed specifically to harm other people) to anything else doesn’t make sense. A person can make a reasonable justification for self-control and personal responsibility, but please don’t compare a gun to other items.

    I despise the slippery slope theory that taking away one right automatically will lead to other things being taken away. Take away the things that need to be taken away. Anything that can fire more than 6 times per minutes seems reasonable to me. Meanwhile, NYS taxes alcohol and cigarettes and uses some of that money for heathcare and prevention education. Why not tax gun and ammo to support guidance counselors or psychologist in schools. The High School in my School District has 1,000 students and 1/5 of a psychologist (is there only one day a week). Maybe a lack of guidance for teenagers might lead to bad things. Chicago is taxing guns for a similar reason (link below).

    I agree we do have to look at the larger issues as well, especially a society that glorifies violence. Movies with dozens of killings (Skyfall, Bourne Legacy, Taken) are all rated PG-13, but show a little skin and the movie has to be rated R.

    This country has a huge problem with gun violence (link below). However, all I hear is “We tried nothing and we’re all out of ideas.” Let’s try something! If the pro-gun population has an idea to lower gun deaths without regulations, I’ll try it, but the status quo is deadly.

    (http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/11/03/us-usa-guns-chicago-tax-idUSBRE8A201O20121103)
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_firearm-related_death_rate

    Sorry for the rant, but one last thing that might make the comparison between alcohol and guns on the same page. 3-D printers can (or in the near future) create working firearms.
    http://www.businessinsider.com/3d-printer-guns-morality-2012-11

    (Fyi, 700,000 people each year are injured in alcohol related accidents, 25,000 are killed)

  4. I’m in Europe and here people don’t own guns – such horrific events happen once a year or even less often. It seems that in America there’s a non-criminal civilian shooting other civilians almost on a weekly basis.

    The whole NRA thing sounds totally ridiculous when watched from a perspective – it just makes no sense at all. Just try to imagine a country where stool, table or boat producers dictate national policies and are feared by the government!

    Oh and on top of that – national heated discussion if EVERYONE should be allowed to posses tools designed strictly for killing people?! Really? It just blows my mind.

Whatya think?