Gun control – it’s like saying, ‘drug policy reform’ or ‘a woman’s right to choose.’ Everybody’s ear pricks up or they look a bit closer at the page.
There’s a petition going around Texas to allow the open carry of firearms to licensed owners. Needless to say, this scares a lot of, well, scared people. The same kind of people who think it’s mean for teachers to grade in red pen and host baseball leagues where every kid gets to play six innings and they never keep score.
These people may think by putting the clamps on tight enough, they can nurture the nature out of the human animal. I don’t believe that will work – ever. This is a plea for reason and an open invitation to live in the reality we all occupy.
First, the citizens of this country have the right to keep and bear arms. This is not to put Bambi on my dinner table. and is really not for defending my home. No, it’s written into the Bill of Rights, and they don’t teach that much anymore. The Second Amendment states, ‘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.’
There you have it. We have the right to equip and organize ourselves into a militia so we can defend the principles this country was founded on, such as freedom from an ornamental and onerous government.
If you want to carry a gun, carry a gun. Criminals do not operate inside the boundaries of the law. In most violent crimes involving handguns, the weapons were owned and obtained illegally.
People are going to do what they want to and maybe, if we could all be up front about it, folks would be a bit more polite. Maybe the police would be more inclined to be civil and in our service.
As Thomas Jefferson once paraphrased from Cesare Beccaria’s On Crimes & Punishment, ‘Laws that forbid the carrying of arms . . . disarm only those who are neither inclined nor determined to commit crimes . . . Such laws make things worse for the assaulted and better for the assailants; they serve rather to encourage than to prevent homicides, for an unarmed man may be attacked with greater confidence than an armed man.’
Many people disagree and take a narrow view. Instead of taking offense, simply contemplate the number of people on this campus who smoke dope, park illegally, shoplift, violate patent and copyright laws and smoke within 20 feet of the entrance to a public building.
People do what they want to. It gets dangerous when you have to be dishonest about it.
