(Thanks go to Peggy for this one)
In the wake of the heart-rending massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School, a cry has arisen for gun control. But such calls are misdirected. The lessons of Scriptures and history are clear that the key is controlling what is in one’s heart, not what is in one’s hand. As the great Daniel Webster reminded a crowd at the U. S. Capitol:
[T]he cultivation of the religious sentiment represses licentiousness . . . inspires respect for law and order, and gives strength to the whole social fabric. Whatever makes men good Christians, makes them good citizens.
The Founders understood that the inside was the most important focus, not the outside. This is why Thomas Jefferson believed the teachings of Jesus were so effective, explaining:
The precepts of philosophy, and of the Hebrew code, laid hold of actions only. He [Jesus] pushed his scrutinies into the heart of man, erected his tribunal in the region of his thoughts, and purified the waters at the fountain head.
While civil law prohibits murder, the Bible addresses it before it occurs–while it is still only a thought in the heart (see Matthew 5:22-28). As John Quincy Adams explained:
Human legislators can undertake only to prescribe the actions of men: they acknowledge their inability to govern and direct the sentiments of the heart . . . . It is one of the greatest marks of Divine favor . . . that the Legislator gave them rules not only of action but for the government of the heart.
I think Gabrielle Giffords and Mark Kelly have offered a more realistic plan to deal with gun violence than “Gee, it sure would be nice if everyone was Christian again.”
http://m.usatoday.com/article/news/1816383?preferredArticleViewMode=single
Giffords and Kelly are American heroes who have also been victims of gun violence. To my mind, no one has more credibility on this issue than they do. An excerpt:
“Special interests purporting to represent gun owners but really advancing the interests of an ideological fringe have used big money and influence to cow Congress into submission. Rather than working to find the balance between our rights and the regulation of a dangerous product, these groups have cast simple protections for our communities as existential threats to individual liberties. Rather than conducting a dialogue, they threaten those who divert from their orthodoxy with political extinction.
As a result, we are more vulnerable to gun violence. Weapons designed for the battlefield have a home in our streets. Criminals and the mentally ill can easily purchase guns by avoiding background checks. Firearm accessories designed for killing at a high rate are legal and widely available. And gun owners are less responsible for the misuse of their weapons than they are for their automobiles.
Forget the boogeyman of big, bad government coming to dispossess you of your firearms. As a Western woman and a Persian Gulf War combat veteran who have exercised our Second Amendment rights, we don’t want to take away your guns any more than we want to give up the two guns we have locked in a safe at home. What we do want is what the majority of NRA members and other Americans want: responsible changes in our laws to require responsible gun ownership and reduce gun violence.
We saw from the NRA leadership’s defiant and unsympathetic response to the Newtown, Conn., massacre that winning even the most common-sense reforms will require a fight. But whether it has been in campaigns or in Congress, in combat or in space, fighting for what we believe in has always been what we do.”
The first sentence above is astounding:
The ONLY thing gun control laws do is keep guns out of the hands of law-abiding citizens. When they can guarantee that criminals won’t be able to get guns, then perhaps a dialogue can be started.
Until then, Chicago – the murder capital of the world with the most strict gun control laws – stands as a shining example of why gun control laws do not work.
“The Constitution guarantees the right to KEEP and BEAR arms ans states that the right SHAll NOT BE INFRINGED!”
The Second Amendment also specifically calls for regulation of this right. Funny how you always leave that out. Your are proving Gifford and Kelly’s point; for the far right, the Second Amendment is all rights and no regulation.
“Special interests purporting to represent gun owners but really advancing the interests of an ideological fringe…”
Fringe?”
Yes. The NRA leadership is far more radical than the majority of its members, and opposes common-sense reforms that its members and the majority of gun owners actually support:
“Here are five key issues that divide the LaPierres at the top of the NRA food chain from their 3 million (or 4 million, depending upon the press release that day) members:
1. Gun Show Loophole
Currently, in over 30 states, one can walk into a local gun show and purchase a weapon from a “private seller,” who does not have to conduct any kind of background check. For example, a .50 caliber sniper rifle, which can take down a helicopter. The NRA has fought to block any and all efforts to pass a federal law closing this infamous gun show loophole, as well as any efforts in the states. (But remember, they are anti-crime!)
Timothy McVeigh was once one of these “private sellers” on the gun-show circuit, and everyone from the Columbine killers to members of Hezbollah have obtained firearms this way. Not surprisingly, just like most other sentient beings (including 85% of gun owners not in the NRA), 69% of NRA members, when polled by conservative Republican Frank Luntz, think this loophole should be closed.
2. Terror Gap
If you are put on the U.S. terror watch list you cannot board an airplane. You can, however, still purchase guns and explosives. According to the Government Accountability Office, “From February 2004 through February 2010, 1,228 individuals on the watch list underwent background checks to purchase firearms or explosives; 1,119, or 91 percent, of these transactions were approved.”
NRA members understand this even if their leadership stubbornly tries to protect the gun-ownership rights of terrorists (but they’re patriots, I tell you!). Eighty-two percent of NRA members think this gap should be closed.
3. Tiahrt Amendments
Named in honor of all-around clod, former Kansas Republican Congressman Todd Tiahrt, this is part of the NRA’s constant effort to hamper, harass and harangue any government effort to get to the bottom of how guns came to be used in a crime. These amendments, attached to federal spending bills, do their best to severely limit law enforcement’s ability to access, use and share data that helps them enforce federal, state and local gun laws.
Not surprisingly, while these are a big hit at NRA HQ and among those members of Congress so graced with their campaign contributions, 69% of their own members have come to the logical conclusion that this is a pretty bad idea, as have 74% of non-NRA gun owners who think there should be no barriers to information-sharing between federal agencies and police when it comes to gun crimes.
4. Reporting Lost and Stolen Guns
Supporting provisions requiring this would seem to be only common sense. But there is not much of that present among the NRA’s leadership. For example, the NRA has not only fought all efforts to make reporting lost or stolen guns to the police a requirement, but in Pennsylvania, where scores of cities and townships have picked up the slack by passing these measures themselves, the fine Americans and conservative-lawsuit-abuse haters at the NRA have actually threatened to sue to overturn these laws. Yes, you read that correctly, our friends who love state and local rights when it comes to allowing a kid to stay on their parent’s healthcare policy until they are 26, don’t feel so much the same way about guns.
NRA members would seem to disagree: 78% of them think this provision would be a good idea, as do 88% of non-NRA gun owners.
5. Sharing Records With National Instant Background Check System (NICS)
The Fix Gun Checks Act, modeled on ideas developed by Mayors Against Illegal Guns, was introduced in the wake of the carnage at Tucson by, among others, Senator Chuck Schumer in March 2011. Besides closing the gun-show loophole (see #1), it also sought to fix a huge problem in the current federal background check system–a lax attitude by many states and some federal institutions in sharing records of those ineligible to buy firearms due to criminal record or mental health defects.
For example, Seung-Hui Cho, the mass murderer at Virginia Tech, had been declared mentally unfit by a judge in Virginia, and Jared Loughner had been rejected by the military for admitted drug use. Both of these men never should have been able to get anywhere near buying a gun legally. But these records were never shared.
The Fix Gun Checks Act would provide both incentives and penalties to states so that all these records are shared in as timely a manner as possible. But NRA leadership has gone to war with this bill, as with all other efforts to keep guns out of the hands of criminals and the mentally unfit. Yet, a poll of swing-state voters taken around the time the bill was introduced showed overwhelming support for this concept among gun owners. In Indiana, Ohio, Virginia, Arizona and (most ironically, and sadly) Colorado, more than 82% of gun owners believed states should be fully funded in their efforts to share these records, while 91% supported requiring federal agencies to share information on potentially dangerous persons such as Loughner.
So there you have it. Five measures, none of which would violate the very broad reading of the Second Amendment recently given by ultra-conservative Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia; all of which would have an immediate impact in terms of making our families safer, in a country where 34 people are murdered by guns every day–or one Virginia Tech every single day of the year.”
http://www.salon.com/2012/07/24/gun_owners_vs_nra_leadership_salpart/
“God bless this woman, Gabriel Giffords (and her associate, Mark Kelly).”
Mark Kelly is Gabriel Giffords’ husband, not her associate. I’m really surprised you don’t know this given how much attention her recovery was given in the media.
Chris: “The Second Amendment also specifically calls for regulation of this right.”
It calls for a regulated militia. That only translates to gun control if you think that all citizens belong to the federal government.
I believe we are free persons and I believe “well regulated” means that as free people we must and should be responsible and prepared to defend o0ur freedom. Government is the servant of the free people. I also believe we have laws and the justice system to punish law breakers for criminal acts.
The left’s propensity to put the responsibility for mass slaughter on gun sellers and gun owners is part of the problem. Progressives have excuses for those who commit evil deeds. The shooter didn’t do it the gun did. As a result we never get around to looking for the underlying problems in our society that ensure these kids have no moral grounding and are confused about their value and worth…even their gender rolls.
The extremist progressive propensity to use tragic events to further their agenda is despicable!
“Your are proving Gifford and Kelly’s point; for the far right, the Second Amendment is all rights and no regulation.”
That is utterly foolish and absolute BS.
20,000 gun laws are a testament to the rights cooperation on reasonable gun law regulation.
The extreme progressive left is NEVER satisfied. this isn’t about guns it is about POWER…political POWER.
“Never let a crisis go to waste”…you people are disgusting and shameless. You don’t give a damn about keeping kids, or anyone else in society safe.
Mark Kelly is Gifford’s “associate” in this political power grab. He is her “associate” in exploiting this event. Besides, since when do progressives, particularly feminist progressives acknowledge “husbands” anyway? If she wants him to be designated such why not use his name? Why isn’t she Mrs. Kelly or Gabrielle Kelly?
Chris, hang on a sec, in almost every other aspect of law the Bill of Rights has been broadly construed to restrain the states as well as the federal government. Few today would argue that states can abrogate the right to free speech guaranteed by the First Amendment. Yet many are prepared to let them gut the second, on the grounds that the framers didn’t foresee urban violence on the scale we face now. Maybe they didn’t, but so what? Civil-liberties advocates don’t accept urban violence as an excuse to curtail other constitutional rights, such as the protection against unlawful search and seizure.
Accepting the Second Amendment at face value doesn’t mean you can’t regulate gun ownership. No one can argue plausibly that the authors of the Bill of Rights meant to make the authorities powerless to disarm criminals. The framers likely would have objected to a blanket proscription of handguns, which they would have seen as legitimate weapons of self-defense, and arguably they would have opposed a ban on assault rifles, the AK-47 being to today’s oppressed what the long rifle was to those of 1776. But local gun registration presents no obvious constitutional problems. Criminals don’t register guns, of course; that’s the point. Arrest a car full of mopes with guns and no permits and you have a good ipso facto case for throwing the book at them. How much better to approach gun control on a reasonable basis rather than make a religious war out of it.
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.
SHALL NOT BE INFRINGED is strong language. “Shall not” is used in contracts and the law to indicate a very strong intent…no wiggle room!
Websters defines infringe: to fail to keep
Synonyms breach, break, contravene, fracture, infringe, offend, traduce, transgress
the right to bear arms shall not be infringed…breached, broken, contravened, fractured, offended, traduced, transgressed!
The intent is clear when those who wrote and first defended the right express their opinions:
“I ask, Sir, what is the militia? It is the whole people. To disarm the people is the best and most effectual way to enslave them.” – George Mason, Co-author of the Second Amendment during Virginia’s Convention to Ratify the Constitution, 1788
“Firearms stand next in importance to the constitution itself. They are the American people’s liberty teeth and keystone under independence … from the hour the Pilgrims landed to the present day, events, occurences and tendencies prove that to ensure peace security and happiness, the rifle and pistol are equally indispensable … the very atmosphere of firearms anywhere restrains evil interference — they deserve a place of honor with all that’s good.” – George Washington, First President of the United States
“The Constitution is not an instrument for the government to restrain the people, it is an instrument for the people to restrain the government – lest it come to dominate our lives and interests.”
— Patrick Henry
This much should be clear, the debasement, reversal, and destruction of Patrick Henry’s vision of government and the Constitution will be brought about by people like Chris and politicians who attempt to marginalize legitimate gun owners with this sort of blatantly bigoted and insulting political propaganda —
“Special interests purporting to represent gun owners but really advancing the interests of an ideological fringe have used big money and influence to cow Congress into submission.”
These intellectually bankrupt big-brother government politicians and their thoughtless progressive lackeys just might win the day. Then the Constitution will become a truly dead document, executed by hapless morons who seek to disarm Americans and enslave us all to their mindless, corrupt, ideological drivel.
Obama, the Democratic Party, and their legions of brown-shirt followers are determined to fundamentally change Americans from free citizens to subjects. Already the subjects yet unborn have been enslaved to an astronomical government debt. But that isn’t enough. Welcome to Chris’ Brave New World. I hope y’all enjoy being crapped on by Democrats and their mindless goons.
In related (barely) news, Salinas California is considering naming a school after a notorious criminal:
http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/337291/and-will-jesse-james-or-billy-kid-elementary-school-follow-victor-davis-hanson
Victor Davis Hansen asks: “…this could be a precedent-setting move: The Cole Younger Preschool or the Killer Miller Kindergarten?
How about the Charles Manson Junior High?
The left controlled school system in California have totally screwed up our kids because they have failed to accurately teach about freedom and our heritage. the notion of hyphenated Americans has created division. But aside from that isn’t there a famous Hispanic American without a criminal record that would make a better choice?!!!
Ladders don’t kill people, people kill people.
http://www.rochestermedia.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/Gun-Control.jpg
I realize this is a repeat of one of my earlier comments, but it seems appropriate here.
Under original intent, the term “well regulated” means working properly and/or well trained. A “free state” is synonymous with “state of freedom”. So try this… A well trained militia being necessary for the security of a state of freedom, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.
Tina: “The left’s propensity to put the responsibility for mass slaughter on gun sellers and gun owners is part of the problem. Progressives have excuses for those who commit evil deeds. The shooter didn’t do it the gun did.”
This is pure nonsense. No one on the left has tried to absolve any of the recent mass murderers for their crimes. No one on the left is arguing that Jared Laughner should go free. You are simply making this up.
“As a result we never get around to looking for the underlying problems in our society that ensure these kids have no moral grounding and are confused about their value and worth…even their gender rolls.”
I for one am very confused about “gender rolls.” Do they taste good? Do you have to cook them first?
“20,000 gun laws are a testament to the rights cooperation on reasonable gun law regulation.”
Tina, I listed above five reasonable gun laws that should be in place, that most gun owners and NRA members support, but that do not currently exist due to the influence of the NRA. Why have you ignored these specific proposals in favor of making such generalized arguments?
“Mark Kelly is Gifford’s “associate” in this political power grab. He is her “associate” in exploiting this event.”
You mean the event where his wife was *shot in the head?* Jesus, Tina, what is the matter with you? You really think this is about exploitation and politics to them, and not about preventing more tragedies *like the one they lived through* from happening again? How f*cking cynical are you?
Had to read the plea, you would know that Giffords and Kelly are themselves gun owners! They are not interested in taking guns away from responsible citizens. They deserve at least the benefit of the doubt. They don’t deserve you making baseless assumptions of bad faith.
“Besides, since when do progressives, particularly feminist progressives acknowledge “husbands” anyway?”
*eyeroll* If you actually knew anything about feminism, you would know how ignorant and ridiculous this question is. But you don’t, and you aren’t interested in finding out. FYI: Feminists get married too, Tina. They love their husbands and wives. Again, I implore you to actually do some friggin’ research on feminism before you make such stupid assumptions. They embarass you. Most of your attacks on feminism have nothing to do with actual feminists, they are simply imaginary strawwomen that you made up in your ungrateful head.
“If she wants him to be designated such why not use his name? Why isn’t she Mrs. Kelly or Gabrielle Kelly?”
Totally ugly and unnecessary. You should be ashamed of yourself. But thank you for proving why we still need feminism–not only do you want a return to traditional gender roles (or “rolls” to use your term), you actually believe that if a woman doesn’t take her husband’s last name, then their marriage is not valid enough for you to recognize.
That you could call into question the validity of a marriage between a woman who was *shot in the head* and the brave astronaut who has stood by her side through the whole ordeal, simply because you disagree with them politically, reveals you for the sick, hateful and malicious partisan you are and always have been.
Jack: “Chris, hang on a sec, in almost every other aspect of law the Bill of Rights has been broadly construed to restrain the states as well as the federal government. Few today would argue that states can abrogate the right to free speech guaranteed by the First Amendment.”
“Few?” Anyone familiar with American history knows that even the first amendment has its limits. Can’t shout fire in a crowded theater, for instance. Can’t directly incite violence (though this is often murky). Every right has corresponding restrictions that are necessary to protect public safety. We have to have the balance.
“Accepting the Second Amendment at face value doesn’t mean you can’t regulate gun ownership.”
This seems to contradict what you wrote above, but I agree. Regulation does not contradict the Second Amendement. I posted a list of proposed regulations above that have been combatted by the NRA, even though the majority of their members support these regulations. I would like to hear your opinion on them.
“No one can argue plausibly that the authors of the Bill of Rights meant to make the authorities powerless to disarm criminals.”
I agree. Unfortunately because of the gun show loophole, which Wayne LaPierre claims doesn’t exist, criminals can get and have gotten easy access to guns without a background check. According to the ATF, gun shows are the second leading source of illegally diverted guns in the U.S. Terrorist leaders have advocated the exploitation of gun shows. Tm McVeigh and the Columbine shooters obtained their guns this way. And yet the NRA still opposes reuqiring background checks at gun shows. This is deeply irresponsible.
“The framers likely would have objected to a blanket proscription of handguns,”
I object to this too! The handgun ban in Chicago was an overreach, and it clearly did not work. I am glad the Supreme Court shot it down. I have enjoyed shooting with handguns, even though I am not very good at it. The NRA has been successful in getting people to believe that we just want to take their guns away, but for most of us that just isn’t true.
“arguably they would have opposed a ban on assault rifles, the AK-47 being to today’s oppressed what the long rifle was to those of 1776.”
Now that, I think, is bananas. No one needs an AK-47, and it is way too dangerous. What do you mean by “oppressed?”
“But local gun registration presents no obvious constitutional problems.”
Neither does federal registration. If we have to register cars, we should also be able to register guns.
“Criminals don’t register guns, of course; that’s the point.”
And the gun show loophole makes this easier.
“The lessons of Scriptures and history are clear that the key is controlling what is in one’s heart, not what is in one’s hand. ”
That’s all very noble, but not very practical … as we see, repeatedly.
I only saw a blurb, and had not the time to follow up. Some stressed out school teacher in the east somewhere, vented on You-Tube, got 5150’d, and had to turn in his rifle.
A liberal, mind you.
And I feel with him. We are all, the pollsters tell us, still not happy with the direction in which the country heads. The cultural progression from June Cleaver to June Shannon can only be named a degradation, and any number of simple, sensitive, liberal souls might be tempted to pull that AR-15 out of the closet and head on down to the mall to do a little remedial work on the species.
So, it really is better that we not have access to the AR-15’s.
After much thought I have come to the conclusion that the second amendment is antiquated and needs to be revised to meet the needs of our society.