Freedom. I get it. Freedom is intoxicating. Freedom is invigorating and empowering.
I was raised knowing guns. My dad took me shooting when I was a kid. I shot a 357, I shot 22 rifles, a shotgun, a 45.
I am not a gun aficionado, I was a kid. I did not keep up with a passion that was my father’s. He owned guns, he bought and hid guns from his second wife because they were broke, but somehow my father always found a way to buy a gun. Child support was questionable, but money for a gun? He was on it!
So I realize that it’s easy for me to sit here and type from my computer that gun freedom is not a requirement of humanity. It is not an essential part of life. We do not need to hunt food. We can go to the store and buy chemically engineered food for ourselves, thankyouverymuch. But I understand the heated debate of the second amendment. I have family that are vehement about their rights to bear arms. The guns mean something to them. It’s a hobby that brings them enjoyment, so why should a bunch of tree hugging, granola crunching hippies be able to take them away?!
Because the freedom of that right is being horribly brutalized. There is no sense of responsibility among the whole of gun owners. There is no secret brother/sisterhood where gun owners communicate among themselves and make sure everyone is in their right minds. There is not a responsible overseer who regulates the mental health of everyone who picks up a weapon and loads it. There is no sense of community within the arms-bearers to take care of their right.
Unfortunately, the only time gun owners want to huddle and take care of each other is in the shadow of the possibility their guns will be taken. I have yet to hear about any movement of the gun owners to weed out their own dysfunctional members. They are happy to hang out to dry offenders and those that bring heat down on the second amendment, but zero suggestions on how to make it work.
It’s time to take ownership of the weapons you hold so dear. It’s time to take yourself out of the equation and look at the big picture. If i’m not mistaken the second amendment is about protection of state and community.
“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”
Militia is not an individual collector. It’s not representative of someone who likes to hunt. It’s about a community coming together to protect -under highly unlikely circumstances- their country and community. To defend our country against those that might try and take it from us.
Hmmmm… pretty sure our current climate has vastly outgrown the purpose of the amendment in the first place.
When individuals with questionable mental health can easily get their twisted hands on weapons and cause mass devastation of innocent bystanders it’s time to question gun control.
When mass shootings happen week after week, month after month, and year after year, it’s time to take hard action.
How will your humanity suffer from lack of a gun? How will your life be incomplete without access to a weapon? Is that greater than the thousands of parents who no longer have access to their children? Families who are now incomplete because a life has been taken for no reason other than someone with an imbalance made a plan and acquired weapons for no reason other than to kill innocent people?
Is your right more important than those lives? Now close your mouth and table your defense long enough to actually consider that any one of those inconceivable atrocities actually happened to your own family. Your own child in a classroom, or your own spouse at a concert or movie theater.
I fail to understand why so much effort goes into protecting the guns and not the people they were only made available to protect.
This country has far outgrown the second amendment principle. We have abused and neglected that right to the point that is is now destroying the cities, communities and people it was put in place to protect. Consequences must be had. In taking responsibility for the rights, you also take responsibility for the actions. Every person defending his/her right to own their firearms also takes ownership on the people who have used the same weapon to kill children, civilians, students, teachers, innocent members of the community.
Do you want to own a gun? Then join an organized, monitored, cooperative group of trained, licensed individuals who can also be responsible for how each weapon is used. Other than that, no guns should be permitted. At least until we have had a marked amount of time without tragedy related to a firearm. Don’t like my suggestion? Come up with a solution, not a defense.
Sarcasmica 