While I am 'new' to daily KOS, I am not new to the fight to keep access to our Natural Rights available to us.
The Constitution is something very dear to me. I firmly believe that as it stands now it is the last best hope that we have to fullfill what our Founding Fathers originally put to paper on July 4th, 1776 in Philadelphia. The corner stone of the Constitution is the Bill of Rights, something patterned strongly by the Virgina Declaration of Rights {linked here}
Over the years Citizenship has changed its requirements, first including those white men who did not own land, then including everyone born in the US whether man, woman, freeman, former slave, black, white, brown, yellow, etc. The concept of Natural Rights as espoused by John Locke, George Mason and Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel is something that I believe in very strongly.
Personally, I feel that the Right to Keep and Bear Arms secotion of the 2nd Amendment to the Unites States Constitution is the arbitor and gatekeeper for the remainder of that Document. It is the RESPONSABILITY of all human beings to maintain their comfort level of self-defense as they deem necessary to keep their persons safe at the level they feel is correct.
What this boils down to for me, is that if someone wishes to excersize their right to personal self-defense by learning how to properly use a firearm NOTHING should stand in their way. Not poverty, not fear, not reliance upon outside factors. Allowing onesself to not protect themselves - while a choice I endevor to keep available - is nothing short of foolishness. "When seconds count, police are minutes away!" is a good example of this thought.
Gun restriction laws as they stand today are unreasonable in several states of this Union as well as from teh Federal level as well. The Gun Control Act of 1986 cut off specific tools from a citizen's arsenal - yes ARSENAL - that can be useful to maintain their personal defense as well as keep alive the fear that Jefferson, Gadson, John Q Adams and Franklin all felt was necessary to keep our SERVANTS in Washington both honest and working for our best interests. Today's AK-47s and M-16s are the equivalant to 1783's muskets.
The Brady Act grew out of a very unfortunate act of violence committed by a friend of the Reagan and Bush families that resulted in the paralysis of James Brady. the interesting thing is that even after this act was placed into law, the gunman could ahve stolen the same revolver from a family member and done the exact same thing. Nothing was stopped besides peoples' ability to get the tools they want to excersize their right to self-defense.
The 1968 gun laws grew out of two events: the death of JFK and the arming of brown people who were defending themselves from corrupt police and federal agencies.
At this point, there are several states that are listed as Shall Issue with just a few that are May Issue and one Fail to Issue left. While no statistics show that there is a decisive lowering of crime in areas with many Carry Concealed Weapons permits are being issued, there is also no increase in violent crime in those areas either. I draw the hypothesis that since there is no emperical correlation to gun ownership and violence that there should be fewer if any roadblocks to allow human beings access to their natural right to self defense.
As a Liberal, I feel that it is our duty as protectors of individual civil rights to uphold the virtue of gun ownership that our forefathers instilled in our Constitution. The Federal Government is charged with NOT interfering with gun ownership nor in the establishment of state-sponsored militias. While I do not advocate forcing all residents of the USA to own guns, I do feel that there should be much fewer restictions, either legally or commerce-based, upon their ownership. Those that choose to not own guns are beholden to those that do.
