Time to rethink the Second Amendment
To the Times: America in the 21st century: 12,000 gun homicides per year, twice that many gun suicides per year. Toddlers shoot people on a regular basis. Toddlers. Look it up.
We are now looking back from a small distance, at America’s latest mass shooting. We average approximately one mass shooting a day right now. Some get more press than others, but it is constant. We need to make it keep looking gruesome even as it fades into the fog of the next worst mass shooting in American history. How much is enough? How can we continue to protect our guns more than the lives of our fellow countrymen? There has to be a middle ground.
We keep hearing that this is not the time to talk about stricter gun laws. Nobody said it was too soon to pass the Patriot Act right after 9/11. It got passed in the heat of the moment. How many more heat of the moments do we have to have with mass shootings. Many more people are killed with guns every year in this country than those we lost on 9/11.
The current interpretation of the Second Amendment is not the only one available. Maybe it is time to reread the words as they were written: 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.” For some reason many among us, though likely not a majority, insist on reading this statement in reverse.
I suppose this latest shooter could be considered a one-man militia, but he was certainly not well-regulated. And how exactly did he contribute to the security of a free state?
Sen. John Thune, RS.D., said, “I think people are going to have to take steps in their own lives to take precautions. To protect themselves. And in situations like that, you know, try to stay safe. As somebody said –get small.”
This sounds frighteningly similar to Donald Trump’s “both sides” argument after the murder in Charlottesville, Virginia. So I guess, according to Sen. Thune we are supposed to take responsibility for not getting shot. I assume he wants each of us to be heavily armed when we leave our homes, or else to cower in fear whenever we are not safely behind some bullet-proof shield.
Is this really the America we want to live in?