By: Geoffrey Yonil
I’ve had several arguments with American citizens, some of them liberal, some of them conservative, some of them who served in the military, but they all generally agree with the second amendment stating their individual right to bear arms. But I’m constantly surprised that no one ever seems able to actually state the entirety of what the second amendment entails, for it’s not as simple as, ‘you can have a gun, here you go.’ It’s slightly more complex than that. For those that don’t know, it states:
“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.”
But who actually uses the second amendment to create a militia in order for them to maintain freedom from oppressive forces? None to very few. Big business is allowed to do whatever it wishes. Governmental forces still manipulate society for their own agendas. Oppression, despite the second amendment, still lives on and individual rights are still infringed. Instead we own guns for individual, solipsistic reasons that border on the paranoid. Constantly I hear, ‘Oh, well, we need them in case a burglar tries to break into our house.’ That’s the one argument I hear without fail when someone is trying to defend their right to possess a gun. How many of those people have experienced a burglary. I’ve never come across someone who has, though I’m pretty certain that there are some. Though I really doubt that owning a gun is the big answer in preventing burglaries. If it was, then I think it would stand to reason that burglaries would happen a lot less often considering the fact that Americans own something like 250 million guns collectively.
If we used guns for their initial reasoning, for the expressed purpose that our Founding Fathers put in the Bill of Rights, then there wouldn’t be as nearly as much unjustified murders as there are now. It’s not that we have more lax gun control, or a more violent history, or even more guns than other nations. In actuality, most other nations mirror America in the amount of guns circulating its streets, both legal and illegal. Yet these other nations barely ever touch the average amount of murders within a year that America does. Rather than protecting its people, guns seem to only serve the expressed purpose of killing them. And while I don’t believe that guns are the root of all evil, we shouldn’t be endorsing the NRA’s slogan of: ‘Guns don’t kill people, only dangerous minorities do.’ Perhaps if America restricted use on the amount of guns flooding the streets, then murder would go down as well. It seems like a natural cause-and-effect correlation.
Or perhaps it’s a mentality. I don’t really see many Canadians or Germans or anyone else celebrating the fact that they have guns nearly as much as Americans do. Perhaps because of American’s trigger-happy mentality, they increasingly don’t think about what they are doing when they buy a gun and the depth of repercussions it could have on both an individual and societal basis.
Whatever statistics you want to find to either support or deny the prevalence of guns in America, the fact still remains that give a person a gun who has been indoctrinated within a society that is constantly at odds with itself, with some serious paranoid issues, and who wants to own a gun with the eventual reason to shoot someone, then you have a recipe for disaster. But have a society that does get along with each other, that owns gun for the expressed purpose of protecting itself rather than harming itself, then perhaps the need for gun control wouldn’t necessarily be as necessary as it is now.
Gun 'em Down!,
Paul
6 Jul 2011Yep, it says “Anything About Guns”, even misguided messages as that.
1) Haiti lacks guns. Does that stop murder? No, they use machetes.
2) DC and Chicago ban handguns. Does that stop murders? No.
3) Kennesaw GA passed a law requiring gun ownership and burgerlies dropped off the charts without any murders for 20 yrs (until a drug deal went bad for visitors at a freeway motel)
4) what is the crime rate in Australia now that guns are banned? Whats the murder rate in Brazil or Mexico? Or break ins in Canada.
By all means, dont let facts get in the way of your fear of guns…
PS… We are the militia they were talking about. I haven’t had any Red Coats quartered in my house since I bought my .30-30!
Joy
6 Jul 2011actually Chicago had to lift their gun ban because the superm court made them
Logan
7 Jul 2011Ya know, I find myself agreeing with this article. It makes a good point. I know for myself that I wasn’t “indoctrnated” in to any type of thinking as reasons to why I own a few weapons. Yes I do take very seriously the dire consequences that will occure if I NEED to end a life. But oddly I didnt see this article as being for or against Americans owning firearms but rather an invitation to a intellectual coversation about firearm ownership. The more we PRACTICE and TEACH firearm safety will be better in the future.
Sadly no matter how hard we try to regulate firearms from getting in tothe hands of criminals or try to educate people tragities and crimes will continue to happen. Trust me I hate it when these kinds of things happen and it deeply saddens me when people die by firearms whether they be criminals or innocent people. But Banning firearms will only cause a revolt in this country.
We Americans earned our freedoms by the barrel of a gun. Either by being in front of it or being behind it killing the very tyrants who threatened our own self governance. All other countries older than us used bows and arrows or swords which are just as dangerous if not more so.
If you look at it we are no more a violent nation than any other country at our stage of developement in history. Does it make us better? No. Could we contol our selves better without the need to strip our selves of freedoms? Yea! So could the rest of the world.
As Tiny Tim says at the end of ‘ A Christmas Carole’ “God bless us, everyone.”
Dennis
7 Jul 2011Ok lets look at the cause and effect suggested; “Perhaps if America restricted use on the amount of guns flooding the streets, then murder would go down as well. It seems like a natural cause-and-effect correlation.”
Or lets try another; Mandate firearms in all households and crime will go down accross the board and civility amoung citizens would go up. Seems like a natural cause-and-effect correlation…..
Will
7 Jul 2011Dennis, the one problem I see with mandating firearms in all households is those households occupied by idiots who would be too stupid to secure the firearm away from their children, and those households where there the occupants stay drunk a lot and/or do drugs and there is domestic abuse history.
G. Yonil
7 Jul 2011actually, in pete squires book, gun culture or gun control?: firearms, violence and society, statistical analysis showed that kennesaw’s ordinance that every household have a gun did nothing to dissuade burglaries. look, the article doesn’t say that banning guns absolutely will prevent any sort of crime, but rather advocates a more informed stance on why we have guns in the first place, and that rather than pandering to an outdated, trigger-happy system that would exploit you with propaganda such as you listed out, we should perhaps acknowledge that guns pose as a danger and we should use them in a responsible manner. it’s not a fear of guns when you’re not treating it like some juggernaut teat you have to suck dry.