Posted on 07/28/2023 8:32:06 PM PDT by DoodleBob
Most of us drive cars or small trucks or motorcycles. To enjoy this privilege, we must do numerous things, some of which cost money. We need to be of a responsible age, get training and earn a license. We also must register our vehicles with their serial numbers and display license plates that identify us.
Why? Because motor vehicles are inherently dangerous and a major cause of death and injury. Accordingly, certain restrictions are deemed necessary to minimize harm. The restrictions include prohibiting driving under the influence of alcohol or drugs, and enforcement of applicable laws have dramatically reduced death and injury over the past half century.
Additionally, there are restrictions on the type of vehicles allowed to civilians: We are not allowed to own or drive tanks or heavy military vehicles, and semitrucks are carefully regulated. No significant group appears to have issues with these restrictions, or with the courts and law enforcement authorities that enforce them. This is common sense.
But when it comes to firearms, common sense seems to go out the window, particularly with ill-informed legislators who bemoan the threat to our supposedly sacrosanct and holy Second Amendment. They have managed to force stupid open-carry or stand-your-ground laws in multiple states, with the equally stupid argument that “the only way to stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.”
I assume that the good guys will be the ones in the white hats? Otherwise, who can tell which is the good guy?
What we need are rules and regulations like those we apply to motor vehicles: minimum age limits, effective training and licensing, uniform registration and licensing of firearms, along with laws requiring their proper safe storage. Improper use, handling or storage of guns (including the threat of bodily harm to others) would be subject to confiscation and possible legal action against the owner.
Obviously, anyone who harms or kills another with a firearm without a valid self-defense argument is subject to criminal prosecution.
As for assault weapons such as the AR-15 and 50-caliber guns, these have no legitimate use in the civilian world, any more than tanks do. They need to be restricted to the military alone.
Some have argued that vehicles are not protected by the Constitution, whereas firearms are. This is a bogus argument. Just as the framers of the Constitution did not foresee the ubiquity of motor vehicles, neither did they anticipate the technological revolution in firearms that makes mass shootings so much a part of our reality today.
John Paul Stevens, a former Supreme Court justice, argued in 2018 that we should repeal the Second Amendment with these words:
“Rarely in my lifetime have I seen the type of civic engagement schoolchildren and their supporters demonstrated in Washington and other major cities throughout the country this past Saturday. These demonstrations demand our respect. They reveal the broad public support for legislation to minimize the risk of mass killings of schoolchildren and others in our society.
“That support is a clear sign to lawmakers to enact legislation prohibiting civilian ownership of semiautomatic weapons, increasing the minimum age to buy a gun from 18 to 21 years old, and establishing more comprehensive background checks on all purchasers of firearms. But the demonstrators should seek more effective and more lasting reform. They should demand a repeal of the Second Amendment.
“Concern that a national standing army might pose a threat to the security of the separate states led to the adoption of that amendment, which provides that ‘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.’ Today that concern is a relic of the 18th century.”
It is worth noting that a “well-regulated militia” is what we today call the National Guard. The so-called militias that claim that title are unregulated and rabidly political, contrary to the tradition that the military or militia be above partisanship.
The solution? It’s easy, both in Kansas and the United States. Elected officials from both parties should embrace commonsense gun reform, the same way they support basic traffic safety measures.
Doug McGaw is a military veteran of Vietnam with a Purple Heart, Bronze Star and Combat Infantry Badge. He is a former professor of sociology at Emporia State University
They ignore it, deliberately misconstrue the meaning, and outright defy it.
“Common sense gun reform” = Repeal of the Second Amendment. The Left unintentionally keep reminding us why the Second Amendment was included in our constitution.
I was pretty tough when I was young! Then I went to school and became a complete idiot.
He is a former professor of sociology at Emporia State University.
The men who wrote the Second Amendment did not finish a hunting trip, they just finished liberating a Nation against Tyranny...
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“To ban guns because the criminals use them is to tell the law-abiding that their rights and liberties depend not on their own conduct, but on the conduct of the guilty and lawless.”
Lysander Spooner
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The only reason why the government would want to disarm you after 247 years is because they intend to do something that you would shoot them for.
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They’re going to keep creating mass shootings until you give up your guns.
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Once you give up your guns, they’re going to kill you.
You know that right?
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See WW1 & WW2 and the many wars prior that the enlighten europeons have been involved in. See Soviet Union, China, Japan, Vietnam, Cambodia, Cuba etc etc where the people gave up their guns only to have dictators take over and kill millions of people.
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muzzle loaders have .50 caliber round balls, bullets, shot : )
Go ahead and make my day sayeth the Minutemen.
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Guns were used for hunting the British : )
Hey Duugie McGewgaw; Driving is a privilege granted by the state to competent people, self defense is a RIGHT GRANTED BY GOD!
The tools we chose to implement that self defense are our GOD GIVEN RIGHT!
So you lose DUMBASS!
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