More static from the NRA

Yesterday the NRA responded to President Obama’s call for tighter regulation on firearms. They called it a breech to the Constitution’s absolutisms in granting freedom to gun owners.

But historically, they are wrong.

We have limited the types of speech that have absolute freedom in our land. For example you can’t yell “Fire” in a crowded theater. You can’t slam someone’s character publicly without facing possible recourse. Freedom of religion, too has limits set by a society aimed at securing itself and its citizens from unwanted plagues. For example, your religion may not have human sacrifice. Until recently you couldn’t have multiple wives (but that seems to be changing in certain areas of the land yet again.) We have limited one man one vote to those who do not have felony convictions. Even the freedom of the press is limited in ways that have been spelled out by the courts over the last two hundred years; both to protect the press and to insure that it doesn’t run roughshod, unchecked, over citizens of the Republic.

In short, we have filtered the Constitution to help it reflect the times in which we live and the problems created by absolutism. However, that being said, the NRA feels differently about the second amendment. Here absolutism is a must. All guns, all ammunition must be protected. Not limited in any way, shape or form. To do so is heresy and un-American.

Now you may wrap yourself in an American flag and proclaim your patriotic duty and show us your NRA card, but the truth of the matter is that over 70% of Americans now believe some legislation is needed to control the proliferation of high powered guns and large magazine that feed those guns. 70%.  Can you image a Presidential candidate getting 70%. That’s a mandate for change.

Guns aren’t protecting us. They are encouraging a crime spree of shootings and killings that is growing each year. This, masked under headlines which say that crime is down. But dig into those articles and you will see that purse snatching and bank robberies may be down, home robberies and con jobs may be ebbing, too, but murder and gun violence is growing. True the FBI covers it up with articles about more deaths from hammers and implements around the home than guns, but imagine the lack of killing in a place like Sandy Hook or Aurora with a hammer instead of a semi-automatic rifle. How many deaths would occur at Columbine or Virginia Tech with a hammer rather than guns?

It is true that guns don’t kill people. They just make it a lot easier to kill people and more of them.

The police chiefs and mayors of the twelve largest American cities have asked for help in this epidemic. Law enforcement in most places have requested aid. (True, some right-wing county sheriffs trying to make headlines have pledged not to support any law coming out of Washington that suppresses the Second Amendment in any way. These guys are crackpots and should be driven from office by level-headed people who understand that gun registration and limits are not a restriction to law-abiding citizens.)

We have had to title cars and license their usage. And a stolen car unreported is a legal responsibility of its owner. Guns should be the same. If your guns are stolen or lost and you don’t report it to authorities, you should be an accomplice to the crimes they commit later on.

Guns should be no different than cars. We limit the type of cars that can drive on our streets. (Just try and license a Formula One race car…) why should we not have limits on the type guns and the amounts of ammunition they carry in order to help bring the violence down? The answer from the NRA is no. Period. No. absolutism at its most perverse.

We refuse anything that will help make America a safer place for our children to live. How about that for an absolute definition of the NRA.