Posted on 05/03/2010 8:52:31 AM PDT by Second Amendment First
After graduating from college, I served four years as an infantry officer in the Army's 25th Infantry Division. I fired everything from 9mm pistols to .50-caliber machine guns, routinely qualifying as "expert" with an M16A2 rifle.
It's not despite such experience, but precisely because of it, that I think the availability of guns in America is stunningly negligent public policy. And it may get worse.
One needn't be a constitutional law scholar to discern the Founding Fathers' intent in the Second Amendment. The original draft presented to the first session of the first Congress read: "The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed; a well armed and well regulated militia being the best security of a free country: but no person religiously scrupulous of bearing arms shall be compelled to render military service in person." (The emphasis is mine.)
Clearly, the framers placed the right to bear arms within the context of organized military service. They wished to highlight the distinction between state militias and the federal army. They viewed state militias as a check against the misuse of the army to impose centralized tyranny.
Even the treacherous, 27-word version of the amendment with which we contend today retains and begins with the phrase, "A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state ..."
Scientists talk about gene "expression" when referring to how the inherited instructions of our DNA are converted into working proteins in our bodies - an interpretive process. With interpretation can come error, and serious errors in gene expression can lead to diseases such as cancer.
America has a cancer originating in the misinterpretation of our government's DNA, the Constitution. In 2008, the Supreme Court handed down an erroneous interpretation of the Second Amendment in District of Columbia v. Heller, striking down a handgun ban in Washington and endorsing the misconception that individuals have a right to own firearms. Now, in McDonald v. City of Chicago, the court could compound the error by striking down a Chicago gun ban, extending the principle beyond the District of Columbia.
The old gun lobby claim "guns don't kill people" is specious. No one rails against the manufacture of axes or baseball bats; there are no campaigns to ban Bowie knives.
With a bolt-action rifle and a telescopic sight, I could put a bullet through my neighbor from a hundred yards away as he crosses his living room. With a Glock 17 pistol stashed in my briefcase, I could enter a boardroom, coolly dispatch a dozen executives, and still have five rounds left to deal with the security guards.
To put it another way, Virginia Tech doesn't happen if Seung-Hui Cho is brandishing a sword. Columbine doesn't happen if Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold are wielding Louisville Sluggers. Charles Whitman doesn't kill 14 people at the University of Texas at Austin if he takes up his sniping position armed with a longbow.
Take it from a former soldier: A gun's power is arbitrary and wildly disproportionate to its price, size, and ease of use. Before the advent of firearms, becoming dangerous meant years of training, if not membership in a warrior caste. Cho simply used a credit card to pay $571 for a Glock 19 and 50 bullets.
A Glock 19 weighs less than a quart of milk; it measures under 7 inches long. Its operation is simple: load, point, shoot 15 times, reload. In one span of nine minutes, Cho killed 30 people and wounded dozens more.
I once carried a rifle in defense of the Constitution. Now I wield a pen and must trust the adage about its superiority. But I admit to feeling outgunned by madmen like Cho and the Supreme Court justices who think more guns are the answer.
Patrick Walsh is a writer who lives in Princeton. He served as a rifle platoon leader, battalion adjutant, and company executive officer in the Fifth Battalion, 14th Infantry Regiment.
Clearly, the framers placed the right to bear arms within the context of organized military service....
No, the framers placed the existence and derivation of the militia within the context of the right to bear arms. Notice which is mentioned first in the original draft. Patrick Walsh's argument is both backwards and dishonest. He also continues the incorrect and dishonest definition and misuse of the term "well regulated".
May as well move to San Fransisco and stop hiding in the closet.
4 years of college and then becomes an officer sounds like the ROTC program.
That’s the difference between normal folks and libtards. Maybe if he were my neighbor it would be otherwise, but as it is I have never entertained the idea of shooting any of my neighbors.
Ok. I just saw it. Patrick Walsh poetry.
That explains everything.
And the remark thet he could shoot his neighbor in his living room at a hundred yards is just the kind of remark some whack job poet from Princeton would make to prove a point.
I have a few guns, and never thought about shooting my neighbor. But then again,I don’t like poetry either.
This guy gives me the creeps.
He look happy in his photo.
look —> looks.
“They viewed state militias as a check against the misuse of the army to impose centralized tyranny.”
And, my poor dimwitted friend, you think this is no longer an issue?
What a tool. Enough said.
Every time Philadelphia politics come up I smell the former (late 18th century) “President” of Pennsylvania .. Joseph Reed, and this current writer appears to be a descendant of that wretched creature.
A much better article would be “Nation’s Liberal Cancer Spreads”.
“Scientists talk about gene “expression” when referring to how the inherited instructions of our DNA are converted into working proteins in our bodies - an interpretive process. With interpretation can come error, and serious errors in gene expression can lead to diseases such as cancer.”
Sounds like he’s been drinking his bong water.
BTW, a**hat, the first version of the second amendment was turned down, with good reason. The right to bear arms doesn't apply to militias but to individuals.
WELL REGULATED!
WELL REGULATED!
WELL REGULATED!
***Clearly, the framers placed the right to bear arms within the context of organized military service.***
Before the Civil War all commentators considered the 2nd Ammendment to be an individual right.
After the slaves were free’d this changed to a “collective right” so as to deny former slaves the right to own firearms.
***I once carried a rifle in defense of the Constitution. Now I wield a pen and must trust the adage about its superiority.***
Let some criminal kick in your door on a rampage and see just how powerful your pen is dum bass!
Literally LOL (not internet jargon-speak, it really happened).
It didn't just happen in the movie. The idiot did it for real.
You want to talk about the real gun cancer?
How about libs who keep pushing for new gun laws because they and their judges WILL NOT enforce existing ones?
How about lib lawyers and judges NOT DROPPING gun law violations by felons on plea bargains?
How about lib prosecutors and judges issuing the maximum penalties possible for criminals committing gun crimes? I mean if they really are serious and it’s as big of a deal and societal problem as they say it is, then step up and make examples of violent career criminals and not be swayed by their color or hard-knock stories.
Want more? Gun cancer in this nation? How about cities and counties and states who still try to pass laws restricting law abiding citizens’ abilities to a) have a firearm, b) have a firearm readily accessible and usable, c) limiting how many you can have, d) when and how often you can buy one, e) trying to prevent private sales or inheritance ability of firearms between parents and children, or relatives, f) trying to frame the issue as purely a hunting issue that works to reduce the types of guns that would be allowed, g) trying to paint allowing people to be armed as ‘the wild west’ when in 48 states where this is allowed crime goes down 20-30 percent immediately and no such liberal fear is realized.
How about the idiots who say “Well who needs a 50 cal gun? What next, you want a nuke too?” The 18th century equivalent of heavy weaponry was a cannon. And no, the Founders and the average person never was looking at the 2nd Amendment as a granting to them to purchase personal cannons. It was to have the same kind of personal arms soldiers had (infantry). We currently are more restricted by that definition today, we have less ability to have what the average infantry soldier can carry. So tell these ass-hats we’re more backwards today in what civillians can use than what the infantryman of today can use. And yet they still aren’t happy about how much we can use.
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