It is empirically predictable that society will eternally have its unfortunate number of aberrant personalities; it is certainly not inevitable that they possess weapons of human destruction. Tragically recurring instances of injury and death demonstrate their hazardous presence in civilized society.
We will once more declare that the ownership of guns, despite common propagandic memes, is not authorized by the Constitution nor statute. Our confident declaration is not alone symptomatic of our confident assertion; it is authoritatively ratified by the plain reading of Early American history. As stated in prior writings, the NRA and others who self-interestedly proclaim that the Second Amendment to the Constitution grants the right to American citizens to own and use guns are proximally responsible for yesterday’s tragic events at Brown University, as well as the plethora of ubiquitous tragic events in public schools, parks, places of worship, in fact, everywhere.
In contrast to our small pocket knife, whose utility extends to cutting a string to open packages, whittling, or eating fruit, the utility of guns is singularly and perniciously limited to inflicting serious injury or death.
The distortion of the contextual terminology of the Second Amendment stems from the ubiquitous combination of personal self-interest (commercial profit) or ignorance of early American History. In no wise did the prudent “Founders” intend to authorize every American citizen to be a “gunslinger,” as the gun lobby would pretend. The intent of the grant to the “People” was not intended for the general American population.
History attests to the serious, hotly contested debate between the “Federalists” and the States’ Rights (Colonists), whether the new Nation would be administered by one Central Government or by several separate State or Colonial Governments. The definitional status of governmental authority, as then perceived, possessed the right to raise and maintain a standing Army; thus an historical compromise was reached to recognize a Central Government but agree that each State (“The People”) would have the right, nevertheless, to raise its own armed militia; and that the People (State Militias) would have the riught to bear arms. This enlightening and determinative fact is objectively referable to early American history and not to polemic.
We have been eternally frustrated at the subjective and convenient misreading of the relevant Constitutional Amendment, its popular acceptance, and agonized at the consequent tragic results. We are also puzzled and frustrated that the opponents of gun ownership do not make this empirically legal argument.
-p.
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