I know this subject isn’t really the type of thing you’d read about on CUA, but I decided to do so because IMO it’s time to have this conversation over and over now so it won’t fade away...again. A point has been crossed long ago. We can no longer be ho-hum about this issue after each mass shooting assuming it won’t happen to us. Thoughts and prayers given to gun violence victim’s and their families don’t cut it. Claiming it is insensitive to the families of gun violence victims to even talk about gun issues (It’s too soon) is cockamamie crap.
Guns. They should be the big story. I’m old enough to remember when they weren’t a big story. When I was young, I very rarely ever heard of guns being any problem in society at large. More than half of all homes had guns in the 1960’s-70’s. Today around 1/3rd of homes do but the number of guns those Americans own in total is off the charts now. Why do fewer households have guns in far higher numbers than in the 1960’s?
Back then people who owned guns typically had a rifle or two and a shotgun to hunt with and maybe one handgun at home. My grandad had guns. He was a hunter. He also had some handguns he collected that were from the 1800’s. A few of them were real collector’s items. When he passed away, the bank came to determine what his stuff was worth and somehow...inexplicably...his gun collection went missing. That was never explained by the bank which claimed they’d never seen any guns. Liars! But I digress.
Did my grandad own a bunch of ammo? No. When he died 1½ boxes of rifle shells were found. That’s it. He had no shotgun shells, even though he owned a shotgun. He had no bullets for any handgun. Apparently, the only shooting he ever planned on doing with a gun was when he hunted. That’s all he was prepared for.
So what happened since the 1960’s and 1970’s when it comes to guns and the gun cult that developed since that time? Did I ever see an AR-15 back in the 1970’s? No. Did anyone own one? No. Were AR-15’s sought? No. Did I see any semi-automatic guns? No. Did anyone? No. Were people jonesing for them? No. Did little boys play with toy guns? All the time. What the hell changed then? The NRA got hijacked by RW nuts who have become the gun maker’s salesmen by foisting CT theories about “others” and “the government will take your guns.” Back in the 1960’s, the NRA was about teaching people how to use a gun and marksmanship. In other words, the NRA was about gun safety.
Enter the current thoughts of a retired Supreme Court Justice:
The Second Amendment should be repealed, former Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens says
For over 200 years after the adoption of the Second Amendment, it was uniformly understood as not placing any limit on either federal or state authority to enact gun control legislation. In 1939 the Supreme Court unanimously held that Congress could prohibit the possession of a sawed-off shotgun because that weapon had no reasonable relation to the preservation or efficiency of a “well regulated militia.”
During the years when Warren Burger was our chief justice, from 1969 to 1986, no judge, federal or state, as far as I am aware, expressed any doubt as to the limited coverage of that amendment. When organizations like the National Rifle Association disagreed with that position and began their campaign claiming that federal regulation of firearms curtailed Second Amendment rights, Chief Justice Burger publicly characterized the N.R.A. as perpetrating “one of the greatest pieces of fraud, I repeat the word fraud, on the American public by special interest groups that I have ever seen in my lifetime.”
There is a rich irony to Stevens' call for repeal of the Second Amendment. Prior to the 1970s — when the NRA was hijacked by right-wing radicals who transformed it from a sports club to a place for spreading paranoid fantasies about government mass confiscation of guns — no one in the mainstream was calling for a repeal of the Second Amendment. This is because, as Stevens pointed out, the very notion that the Constitution could guarantee someone unlimited access to firearms had not yet been constructed. As a result, when moderate gun regulation became necessary, there was little opposition to it — and, as a result, little reason to believe that more extreme measures might be necessary.
www.salon.com/...
There have actually been rulings by the Supreme Court over the years that limited what type of gun a normal citizen could own. The 2nd Amendment was written at a time when your typical American needed a gun to hunt or for defense out in the wilderness. Guns were single-shot muskets and single-shot handguns that had to be loaded with powder and a bullet every time you wanted to take a shot. The 2nd Amendment was written with the gun technology of the time and reflected that.
It allowed for regular citizens to own guns in defiance of the laws in Europe so that a foreign government couldn’t waltz in with it’s military and simply take over without any fight by regular citizens. Of course, there were some unsavory reasons the 2nd Amendment was created. Militias could be formed without being lead or organized by the military or law enforcement which legally allowed people to go after Native Americans or escaped slaves.
After Ronald Reagan was shot, assault-type rifles were illegal to buy or sell in America for a decade and everyone thought that was the right thing to do. I always found that interesting since a pistol was used in that gun assault. When Gatlin Guns were invented, they were not allowed to be owned by citizens. They were war machines. When machine guns were invented they were also made illegal for citizens to own after the mobs used them in the 1920’s and 1930’s. When people started sawing off the barrels of shotguns, those were made illegal for citizens to own. It was obvious to everyone, and common sense, that restrictions on what type of guns citizens could own had to be made to as gun technology changed.
The attitude was simple. Citizens could own guns for hunting or self-defense. Machine guns, sawed-off shotguns, and Gatlin Guns, which didn’t exist in the late 1700’s, were removed from the guns citizens could own because those weren’t defensive or hunting weapons. They were offensive weapons invented to kill humans as quickly as possible. It was obvious they shouldn’t be allowed for anyone to have other than the military and law enforcement.
Now the term "common sense" is used falsely by those who have ridiculous stances that have to be misconstrued as being "common sense" because they are actually just the opposite.
Guns are not going away. The 2nd Amendment will not be repealed. Real common sense needs to be restored concerning gun ownership. Guns are tools created to kill...period. Semi-automatic AR-15’s are not made for hunting or self-defense. This is not what the 2nd Amendment is about and never was. Amendments need to be upgraded as times change. The Voting Rights Amendment was recently gutted, far too soon, as it was determined by SCOTUS that times have changed since the mid-1960’s. That Amendment was changed after just over 50 years of its existence. The 2nd Amendment needs to be updated as well.
This has been a hot topic of discussion where I live. I really get an earful from people who are FOX NEWS watchers and have just about lost their shit regarding March For Our Lives. They tell me that George Soros is behind it all. They say the kids are really actors and coached and that there is no way those kids could be that organized on their own. They believe those kids are being controlled by sinister anti-American forces. They tell me those kids are gay activists, want an abortion and hate God. I’m not kidding. See, if you even want to talk about guns you are obviously evil in many ways.
They also talk a lot about AR-15’s telling me “they only use the same bullets as deer rifles.” One guy just this past Tuesday really made a big deal about that. His thing was what AR stands for. He said, “It doesn’t stand for assault rifle. It stands for ArmaLite!!!” True. And he told me no one owns an assault rifle because those are automatic weapons, not semi-automatic weapons like the AR-15 and the AR-10 (which is actually preferred by folks locally who are really into these types of weapons).
Well, that is the NRA and FOX NEWS argument. It’s so easy to understand. That evil Jew foreigner George Soros is totally behind the March For Our Lives and AR stands for ArmaLite which means this gun discussion is all bullshit. Sorry...no. I see these people in my practice all week long. I’ve been taking a personal poll by asking these outspoken folks if they own an AR-15. So are every single one of them has said, “Yes” with only one “No.” They tell me AR-15’s are very, very common. They are.
Full disclosure. I grew up in Colorado. I’ve lived there and in Oregon and California. I own two guns. Both are pistols. One is a 22 and the other a 38. I’ve shot them rarely. I’m not anti-gun (esp. in the USA) but I firmly believe we’ve gotten way out of whack with the current way the 2nd Amendment is being interpreted by the NRA as meaning citizens have the right to own any and all types of guns in any amount wanted. This was never the thinking for the first 200 years of our country’s existence until the NRA was taken over by radicals.
What do you think?
UPDATE: I’ve been made aware that it is legal to own a Gatlin Gun if it’s a hand-cranked one. OK. Now, where to find one is the question?
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