There is a lot of chatter out there about the Second Amendment,
Obama's executive orders, or purported orders, regarding firearms laws,
restrictions and the like, psychiatry, national security, school
security, and everything in between in recent days. Individual states are coming up with their own versions of increasingly restrictive firearms regulations and any outcry against that is dismissed as right wing extremism.
It
shouldn't need to be said, but stating the obvious is something I'm
good at, so: the events that took place in Connecticut last December are nothing short of
horrendous.
And they have nothing to do with firearms law.
Guessing that second statement is going to lose me a few friends :-P
The
reactionary statements demanding more gun control, fewer high capacity
magazines, bans on certain types of firearms, better background checks
are just that: reactionary. They have no teeth when it comes to actually
preventing the acts of evil and demented people
Sorry,
guys. The world's a screwed up, messy place. Bad stuff happens. Kids
starve to death every day. Babies are abandoned to die because they're
female. Children are sold into sexual slavery. A few words on some
paper, signed by the all of the dignitaries in the world, are not going
to fix that.
And new, stricter, gun control laws are not
going to prevent someone from committing further tragedies in another
elementary school, or a middle school, or a playground, or anywhere else
where groups of tiny humans get together and think they're safe.
It's
an old adage, but it's true: if you make guns illegal, then only
criminals will have guns. I don't know how to get this thought to
actually engage in the minds of society at large, but the fact is that
people who don't care about the legality of their actions are not going
to suddenly change their minds when you pass a new law. Seriously. If
you speed when the speed limit is 60, why would you suddenly decide to
slow down when the sign changes to 55?
Laws do not inhibit the actions of people. People inhibit their actions. We all have a choice to make every day.
This
blog was actually mostly inspired by a "quote" from George Washington
that I ran across earlier today - it wasn't an actual quote, but there
is an actual quote from which it stems:
A free people ought not only to be armed but disciplined; to which end
a uniform and well digested plan is requisite: And their safety and
interest require that they should promote such manufactories, as tend to
render them independent on others, for essential, particularly for
military supplies.
I expect that most people
will simply dismiss that as antiquated and possibly even too complicated
to understand, or at least no longer a necessary thought.
I'll
simply state that America today is barely armed, regardless of what the
left would have you believe. If it came down to it, an uprising could
be quashed in less than 48 hours by military forces without much
difficulty. Weapons technology is leaps and bounds above what even the
most hardcore militia has access to (interesting, when you consider the
purpose of the second amendment...)
Of greater concern,
however, is the lack of discipline we have. We are well on our way to
over half of our population being obese. I'm a member of that statistic.
Not something I'm proud of, but true nonetheless at this point.
There are no fat revolutionaries, which brings me back to my Zombieland manifesto on life:
Rule #1: Cardio
Rule #2: Double tap
