Now this is brainstorming at its most outrageous so please bear with me here.
The last time I owned or even shot a gun I was still a teenager with an overabundance of testosterone and a seeming invincibility. My father always had one or two guns around the house and it seemed the thing to do. Had I been a lousy shot the novelty would have been less enticing as well.
However, as my youthful naivety faded and my father seemed less and less to be the role model I wanted to emulate in life, my fascination with things that go boom faded as well.
Probably the biggest change that came over me with age though was a lessening of overall fear of the unknown. I had survived personal tragedy and and always come out stronger for it. Why did I need lethal weapons in a country where life was relatively risk free. Sure there were bad guys out there but I was good at math and science. I understood odds and statistics and there was nothing I could see that indicated to me my life would be more secure by having some metal object filled with bullets sharing my home with me.
Once the children came, the appeal was even less. I don't know about the experiences any of the rest of you have had being the parents of boys but you don't need to have actual or toy guns within your house for them to be fascinated by them. Every object that has even the slightest shape of a rifle or pistol becomes a lethal fantasy toy to them. It became very clear to me that if I wanted to own a gun, there was real potential for them to get access to it no matter how much effort I put into hiding or securing it. That wasn't a risk I was willing to live with.
Well times have changed and I've had real opportunity to revisit the 2nd Amendment to our Constitution and I'm rethinking my stand. There are incredible events I'm seeing today that I've never before experienced in my 50+ years of watching American politics. As much as I believe the public will open their eyes and move back towards sanity in their choice of leaders, the erosions of our Constitutional guarantees have put in place a situation where we're but a national crisis away from very scary scenarios.
The one area of the Constitution the architects of these changes won't touch though is the 2nd Amendment which, ironically might actually stop these idiots from their plans. What makes them empowered in my opinion is that by in large, the folks that have chosen to utilize their rights to bear arms have been in their camp. We folks that fall under the label of centrist, progressive, and liberal seem to be the most unarmed.
I hate to say it but the obvious solution might simply be for all of us to go out and buy a gun. It doesn't have to be some military assault rifle and for the particularly squeamish, you don't even have to purchase any ammunition. If it really concerns you, melt the damn thing down the day you bring it home. Just the fact that suddenly huge amounts of people who's politics tend left show up on the system at the same time purchasing weapons might tend to cause some trepidation in the administration and they can't say a thing about it. They can't make it out to be a concern because they'd be alienating their gun toting conservative and libertarian base who've been using this 2nd Amendment argument to further their cause for years. It's their Achilles Heel.
Now you don't know how hard it was for me to write this. There's this immense fear that people will actually take me up on this and the proliferation of weapons throughout the country will cause the inevitable loss of life that statistically will occur. However, that would pale in comparison to what our lives would be like should our worst fears of a Fascist takeover come true.