Last Thursday ( a little over a week ago) I wrote a daily
blog concerning violence in our country‑ violence with guns. In the blog I was
calling for a nationwide discussion of the second amendment and what the intent
of that amendment, when it was written, meant.
I decided not to publish that blog that day. Then as of yesterday, with
the horrible news from the Sandy Hook Elementary school in Connecticut, I could
no longer stand by without saying what I think.
I think that either:
(A) The founding fathers got it wrong when considering the
second amendment or
(B) we have misconstrued what they wanted to protect by
being so overboard in our protection of guns as to become stupid in our
protection of our people.
In either case, I think we need a national conversation
about guns and gun ownership and the Constitution.
I have been a sportsman all my life. I have hunted. I am a
fairly good skeet shooter. And have over the years owned a lot of different
guns. I am no longer sure I support the Second Amendment as it is being
interpreted in America today. Friends of mine said, ”John you can make this a
crusade. Too many guns out there. Too much control by the NRA. Too much money
against you.” Tell that to the twenty
grieving parents in in Connecticut this morning. If we don’t start we will
never get it done. If we take that advice my friends gave me— if we had gone
down that road 150 years ago…then slavery would never have been abolished. Wrongs have to be righted. And out-of-control
gun violence must be stopped.
Lets get together and discuss guns. Rationally and without
yelling and screaming. Lets discuss the code of conduct with guns and the
society stung with the violence that comes about from guns. Lets find a way to
end this senseless killing.
I heard a line from a movie the other night being repeated
by two small boys playing in our neighborhood.
“I’m gonna put a cap in your head, man.”
One of them said. They were talking about shooting each other but the
language is so loose and so street-level that the act of killing someone has
been reduced to ease of spiting out a window.
The gunman in Connecticut didn’t put a cap in 26 heads. He
took 26 innocent lives. There’s a big difference. One is a non-thought The
other is murder. They are both acts of murder. On the same day as the Connecticut shootings, in
China a deranged man attacked 33 children at an elementary school. No one, as
of this writing, was dead in that attack. Why? Because he used a knife. Knives
are harder to kill people with. Knives versus guns? It is going to be a hard
discussion, America. But we need to have it.
And don’t tell me guns don’t kill people. A semi-automatic .223 Bushmaster rifle
and two 9 mm’s killed 27 in Connecticut elementary school yesterday.
Second Amendment of
the U.S. Constitution:
“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.”
Where
was the act of a militia yesterday?
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