"Right" to Bear Arms

“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.”

This is undoubtedly among the most misinterpreted pieces of political wisdom which exists.  But there it is; in plain text. 

Please note the “well regulated militia” portion and know that no law prohibiting the buying or selling of guns for civilians could be considered unconstitutional.  The United States already funds the best well-regulated militia in the world, and clearly no one would attempt to threaten the removal of the military’s weaponry (we can’t even bear to consider redistributing some of the military’s funding).  If some form of revolution were to occur, and we could not depend on the military to be on the side of the citizenry, I’m fairly certain that the Constitution would be far out the window anyway, and guns would be sold in supermarkets, on street corners, and in liquor stores for the protection and the removal of the U.S. government.   Shooting someone clearly cannot be construed as some warped form of expression, and as for the second amendment: even if it did protect the right for anyone to own a gun – a child, the elderly, the trigger happy, the cop, the mentally insane – the guns they were referring to were nowhere near as sophisticated [nor as easy to use] as the guns manufactured today.  I do not think muskets can be compared to an AK-47, which in some places is legal for purchase by just about anyone.

I would be completely irresponsible if I didn't cite some firearm statistics whilst writing about gun control.  67% of homicides in 2008 were committed using firearms; you are far more likely to be killed with a gun (your own gun) if you own one than if you don’t; the United States is ranked fourth (after South Africa, Columbia, and Thailand) for the highest amount of murders with firearms…and the list goes on.  Right now, if you lack a criminal record and you have not been adjudicated as mentally incompetent, you can buy guns – in 2010, only .48% of gun purchasing applicants were denied.  “Violent crime rates have been falling in recent years, but the number of people killed by firearms in the United States remains high.  According to the FBI Uniform Crime Report, between 2006 and 2010 47,856 people were murdered in the U.S. by firearms, more than twice as many as were killed by all other means combined.”

Everyone, I’m certain, has heard the assertion that “guns don’t kill people; people kill people.”  As accurate as that statement seems without further examination, it should be qualified by saying that people with guns kill people a lot easier than people with their bare hands, with knives, with poison, with blunt objects or anything else short of the good ol’ explosive device.  Guns create the ability for a person to commit mass murder; a swift genocide of anyone directly near you, or hundreds of feet away.  Not just anyone deserves the kind of power to hurt on such a grand, or such a precise scale.

If you want to defend the ‘right to bear arms,’ then I ask you this: what about the right for a congressperson to hold an event without the fear of her head being blown to bits?

What about the right of a black teenager to walk on the streets with his hood over his head, concealing nothing but skittles and a soda without the fear of being gunned down?

What about the right of a moviegoer to sit in on the midnight premier of a movie with their friends and family without the fear of a random act of violence?

What about the right of a 17-year-old black male to blast his music in his car without the fear of being quieted by use of firearm?

What about the right of holiday shoppers to enter a mall without the fear that they may never see their families at Christmas again?

What about the right of dozens of children, their teachers, and administrators to go to school without the fear of a demented person, strolling onto campus and opening fire?

And finally: consider the rights of the families of those listed above.  Consider that these people have lost the most precious aspects of their lives – their children, parents, sisters, brothers, friends, acquaintances.  We have all lost the right to live without fear.  We have lost the ability to go into an open space without the fear that a deranged person may commit a small genocide in their public mall, school, church, grocery store, or on the street corner.

We too have rights; I tend to think the rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness far outweighs that of gun owners’ right to bear arms.