I'm afraid that there's something that I really just don't understand. I can see something so incredibly obvious; yet an entire nation it seems is prepared to ignore it; even argue vociferously against it.
I am of course talking about the incident at the Washington Navy Yard in which Aaron Alexis, who was working as a military contractor, went on a shooting rampage; killing thirteen and wounding a further eight.
Let me clarify this. Aaron Alexis, the gunman, not only completely legally purchased the weapons with which he destroyed people but was actively empowered by a constitutional right to do so.
The Second Amendment to the US Constitution says that:
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.
Yet somehow this (especially with coercion and "lobbying" from the The National Rifle Association of America) has morphed into a dogmatic barking of merely the last clause; namely "the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed" despite and in spite of the consequences.
Earlier this year we saw even more tragically those consequences when at Sandy Hook Elementary School, twenty-six people were destroyed; including twenty children. Yet what was the NRA's response to this? Rather what was the response of the CEO of the NRA?
"the only way to stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun"
- Wayne LaPierre, CEO The National Rifle Association of America, 21 Dec 2012
Let's think this through shall we?
So, a bloke walks onto a naval base and kills 12 people, but arming teachers at Sandy Hook would have stopped a school massacre? If only, if only someone at defence establishments had more guns...?
As far as I'm concerned, I'm pretty well much convinced that the above statement has been pretty well much proven to be a fallacy and that there actually are no "good guys" with guns; or if there are, where are they?
Come on America... Something's clearly wrong... except...
Yet as far as the NRA is concerned, something is obviously very right with America or else pressure would be brought to bear to change the culture. The killing of 20 school children did nothing and the killing of 13 military personnel also will do nothing to change the culture, much less the idiocy of the Second Amendment and the results therein.
The American people have decided long ago that the deaths of 10,000 people a year and the residual medical costs of gun violence are an acceptable price to pay for "freedom".
If this had happened anywhere in the 'civilised' world it would have been a tragedy, yet in America, 13 people in the grand scheme of things is neither impressive or statistically important.
My judgement must obviously clouded by virtue of the fact that I happen to live in a nation in which after just one mass-shooting, the people and government decided that that was unacceptable and passed laws to prohibit and restrict the use of semi-automatic weapons. When only a single tragedy happened, we in Australia looked at how to prevent it, which I think is a sensible reaction. Clearly I and indeed Australia must obviously be wrong because America looks at tragedies like the Washington Naval Yard and Sandy Hook, flagellates itself for 11 days in the media and then on average waits approximately 78 days for another 10+ people to be destroyed; only to repeat the process.
Really, I ask the question of the utility of law and whether or not it does any real conceivable good.
Didn't someone long ago write about truths which were held to be self-evident? What happened about those?
This is an example where people's "life, liberty" and "their pursuit of happiness" has been stolen, yet America seems to consistently arrive and even argue that allowing people widespread access to the instruments of death is somehow good.
Moreover I personally I fail to see how the continued inclusion of the Second Amendment furthers or promotes the fundamental purposes and guiding principles of the Constitution itself as laid out in the preamble:
We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.
A more "perfect Union"? The establishment of Justice? How does it insure domestic Tranquility or eve provide for the "common" defence? Does the destruction of people needlessly really "promote the general Welfare"?
The way I see it, each of those 12 deaths at the Naval Yard shouldn't be simply a statistic. Every one of those people was a father, a brother, a son, an uncle and very dear and special to someone. Yet because of the operation of the law which allowed someone access to the instruments of death, families are ripped apart, never to be healed. How about telling those families that the destruction of their loved ones and lives are really the "Blessings of Liberty"?
I'm afraid that I really really just don't understand the justification as to why the Second Amendment to the US Constitution should continue to exist, unless the destruction of people is the real aim of the people who continue to defend it.
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