Letters to the Editor
-
Guns necessary to democracy
Considering the aggressive assault on our Constitutional rights in the past six years and the fact that corporate America is pretty much now running the country through campaign contributions and lobbying efforts, it is IMPERATIVE that the average citizen be allowed to bear arms. When the government comes to your door and asks you to give up your guns, it may not be too much longer before the government starts to look more like fascism and less like democracy. All it takes is one would-be Putin to be voted into the White House, for Martial law to be declared after some national emergancy, after which voting rights are indefinitely suspended based on the "national emergency" and poof, democracy is gone. If you think the voters cannot be tricked into voting for someone who does not have democracy's best interests at heart, just take a look at our current Boob in Chief. If citizens cannot bear arms, if the day comes when the federal "government" suspends all of our Consitutional and voting rights, we will be unable to gather to form militias and take our country back by facing down the government controlled military. If you think it cannot happen, read the book being prominently hyped on the Salon home page, "It Can Happen Here." An armed citizenry is essential to our continued freedom, now more than ever. It can happen here and if it does, what can you do if only the military has guns? Nothing. NOTHING.
-
sulpicious
How's about we limit freedom of speach to officially recognized media outlets. Pravda comes to mind.
-
You are out of your mind
I consider myself a little left of center when it comes to social issues but I am sorry, the very idea of repealing the second amendment is insane. Look what happened in Japan this week: the Mayor of Nagasaki is gunned down in broad daylight by local mobsters. The press acknowledges that due to Japan's strict gun laws the only guns in the country are owned by criminals.
I will not, not, not give up my right to defend myself either in my home, on the street or anywhere in my community. With the preponderance of drug and human smuggling across our southern border (I'm from Arizona, I know of what I speak), and the real possibility of Islamic terrorists still operating in our country we need to remain an armed society now more than ever!
There will always be crazy people, there is no denying reality there. And chances are more than a few of them are going to be armed. I refuse to sit in a room and die because I lost my right to carry a concealed weapon thanks to fantasies like yours.
Shame on you, sir. Shame.
-
"A Well-Regulated Militia"
Hold on just one g-darn minute. We don't know what the 2A really says, because the last big 2A case was way back in 1939. (It didn't go the gun owner's way.) Which just might explain why the gun lobby hasn't sponsored a case to the U.S. Supreme Court in the last seventy years. One would think that if the NRA seriously believed that every redneck has an absolute individual right to an arsenal of assault weapons and cop-killer bullets it could have managed to get a case before the court and get its ruling. Yet curiously, it hasn't.
This might be about to change. A 3-judge federal appeals court panel last month struck down D.C.'s gun control laws on 2A grounds; and while it was also a 3-judge panel that ruled against "god" in the pledge of allegiance (later overturned by the full court), there is a chance this case could reach the Supremes before the end of the decade. The fact that D.C. is not a state might give the judges and justices an easy way out; but there is still a chance that we may a long last know the modern meaning of "a well-regulated militia."
Then we will know whether the 2A must be repealed in order to stop gun massacres. Till then, it distresses me when even people who are against the slaughter of school children and college students eagerly "admit" that the 2A says what the gun lobby claims it says. It's like "admitting" the media has a liberal bias because we hear ABOUT that liberal bias every time we turn on the TV or radio or open up a newspaper or newsmagazine.
-
It's easier than all that, just ban the NRA
It can be done, if you can ban the Communist Party, you can ban the NRA. Better yet, put it on a list of terrorist organizations. That way, if anyone has ever contributed to it, they can be thrown in jail. If, in addition, they are non-citizens, they can be deported. Even asylees need not be given so much as a place to live.
As for the folks at the top of the NRA? Life without parole. The foot soldiers? You are what you sign. Jail and a plea bargain. Confiscate their weapons, confiscate their ammunition, confiscate their houses, cars, and the rest of their toys. Many drug pushers have trafficked in less lethal cargo.
The NRA serves no useful purpose, and keeps lethal firearms in the hands of people who wreak havoc and terror. It is a terrorist organization. Ban it, and forget about amending the Constitution.
Don't try to tell me you are a law abiding member of the NRA. There is no such thing. I don't care how many gun safety classes you taught, how careful you are, or how many days a week you go to church, you have advocated the dissemination of killing machines. There are many penitentiaries you can go to to become penitent. We don't want recidivism, so we let you out when the last damn gun is off the streets. Fair enough?
-
Now I'll just point to this
I'll just second Edgore, who was the first to react.
I've never liked Shapiro's writing, but had trouble putting why into a couple of sentences, apart from his obvious worship of Hillary Clinton.
This says it all, though. Some diehard liberal had to jerk a knee at this tragedy, and Shapiro felt it was his duty to be first. He wants another thirty years of dictatorship by the right, because the opposition is too weak to muster a credible majority. Yeah, I know, it's not dictatorship if most of the country sees it as preferable to the alternative, which would be us.
Way to go, guy. Keep handing us losing issues. There are just enough who, if not reminded, will want to embrace them.
Let's reframe this argument. Who let this psycho have a gun? That way we only lose the psycho vote. And they have that anyway.