Tag: Second Amendment

History, Politics, Facts and the Changing Public View

By Budd Schroeder

As the investigation of the Orlando terrorist attack continues, many gun owners get nervous about how legislators may attempt to use this atrocity as an excuse to infringe on Second Amendment rights.  They use the line that this is the worst mass shooting in American history.  However, they neglect to mention the massacres that occurred at Sand Creek or Wounded Knee.  That is understandable because the US Army massacred unarmed Indians and that was a government action.

It is a matter of perception and perspective and of course, the government would like those actions forgotten, but they do continue to tell stories about the Little Big Horn where the Indians fought back and annihilated the Seventh Calvary.

Many of the media and politicians are also deceiving the public by calling the gun used in Orlando an “assault weapon.”  This is a misnomer.  An assault weapon is a rifle that is capable of full automatic fire by the use of a selector switch.  That is a truly “military weapon” like a machine gun and is not allowed to be possessed by civilians except under very strict and limited conditions.  They are totally illegal in most states.

Yet, the politicians and liberal media are calling for a ban on their definition of the “assault weapon” and universal background checks.  Most honest gun owners object to these laws because they don’t work and it is further infringements on the Second Amendment.

When those guns were banned in the 90’s there was no significant difference in the gun deaths.  When the law was repealed with the sunset law, there was still a decrease in the number of gun deaths.  What really confuses the anti-gun crowd is that gun sales have skyrocketed, the number of states passing concealed carry permits increased, and what is formally defined as “gun violence” continues to drop.

That is also an emotional label.  Guns are not violent.  The term should be “criminal misuse of firearms.”  That is accurate.  People don’t blame alcohol or the car if a drunk driver kills people.  They blame the person who deliberately drinks until he or she becomes too impaired to make rational decisions and their motor skills are diminished.

Nobody in the media suggests that the real problem is the easy access to alcohol.  In fact, the New York legislators just passed a bill that makes it possible for drunks to start drinking at 10:00 a.m. on Sundays; earlier in some establishments with a special permit.  The drinking laws are strange in other ways.  If a person gets a felony DWI they can never own a gun, although a gun was not involved in the felony.  Wouldn’t it make more sense for a serious charge like a felony involving a car to forbid him from having a driver’s license or owning a car for the rest of his life?

It is a good bet that would never be the law because that could involve politicians, law enforcement officers and people who have power and influence.  That is the way the system appears to work.

On another proposal, the call is for people who are on the “no fly list” to be denied the right to purchase a gun.  Nobody wants a terrorist, criminal, drug addict or a person with mental difficulties, to have a gun.  However, before a person is put on the NICS list for a background check he should be afforded due process as provided by the Fourteenth Amendment.

Since the SAFE act was passed in New York this has become an issue.  A person can be denied his or her gun rights on a report.  There is no due process.  It is grossly unfair and unconstitutional, but what can we expect from a law that was passed literally in the middle of the night by a majority of corrupt politicians?  Two of the architects of the debacle, Sheldon Silver and Dean Skelos were convicted of corruption and have since been sentenced to prison.

When a politician wants to deprive the citizenry of their constitutional rights, it should be the big red flag that they want to destroy the principles upon which the country was founded.  The Second Amendment was placed in such a high place in the Bill of Rights was because the Founding Fathers wanted the people to be more powerful than the government.  We have politicians who appear to not agree with that balance of power and it seems that every time the legislatures end for the year, we lose a right or even a privilege.

Since the Founding Fathers wanted to protect the people against the possibility of despotic government they wanted an armed citizenry.  Since the government controls the military, doesn’t it seem strange that some legislators want to ban military style weapons for civilians?  One former legislator running for office wants to take on the National Rifle Association.

That seems strange since with the criminal misuse of guns that none of the people involved in the shootings were accused of being NRA members.  Maybe that’s because the NRA has a reputation for having responsible, patriotic members.  They are held in higher regard by citizens than members of Congress.

There must be a reason for that.