The massacre of young children and staff at Sandy Hook Elementary in Connecticut must not be lost in the usual blather of NRA propaganda and gun enthusiast's lament that Americans have the individual right to bear any weapon in public and stockpile weapons that rival the arsenal of the United States government.
The purpose of the Second Amendment is to provide for a citizens militia from foreign invasion or usurpation of the government, as well as for self-protection in the home. It has nothing to do with citizens individually purchasing guns without limit or type of gun. This is simply an NRA fairytale.
The Second Amendment is a collective right rather than an individual right. Conservative Chief Justice Rehnquist called the whole charade around the debate of the Second Amendment as "one of the greatest pieces of fraud, I repeat the word fraud on the American people."*
*[See Robert Hardaway (2002) "The Inconvenient Militia Clause of the Second Amendment: Why the Supreme Court Declines to Resolve the Debate over the Right to Bear Arms," Available at http://scholarship.law.stjohns.edu/jcred/vol16/iss1/2]
States are allowed to regulate and control the sale of firearms but they have failed miserably in their duty to oversee this public trust. Congress also has the power to restrict the sale and manufacture of weapons. For example, Congress enacted legislation "forbidding the manufacturing, transfer or possession of machine guns "and the statute was upheld.
It is not only time for more gun control laws that target assault weapons and magazines that hold hundreds of rounds, it is time for legal scholars, judges, the congress and the president to admit the truth; the Second amendment has been bastardized for profit by the NRA, and states have been negligent in failing to carefully and judiciously regulate the proliferation of guns and ammunition throughout American communities.
Thanks to the NRA, compliant politicians, gun manufacturers and gun dealers, the states have become playgrounds for the sale of arms to anyone and everyone who has a buck.
What a legacy we have left to our children; a country saturated in weapons and violence with the delusion that we are safer with more weapons in the hands of every law abiding person who claims to be sane-at least for the time being. The problem with these law abiding citizens is no one can predict what might trigger another individual to take their legally purchased weapon and used it in a fit of rage. Just understanding this aspect of human behavior should be reason enough to operate on the side of caution and make the sale and regulation of guns as strict as possible in America.
As more Americans insanely rush to buy out all the guns they can amass since Sandy Hook Elementary, there is little doubt now that Americans live in a constant state of fear that they might be killed by a random shooter and yet the random shooter could be their own loved ones or even themselves! There is the obvious worship of guns and violence in American society but we should not just blame the violence on video games or movies. Our culture is grounded in violence: the majority of Americans profess to be Christians but who can ignore that Christianity revolves around the blood and death of a crucified savior on a cross?
It is little wonder we continue to have record numbers of deaths by firearms in America compared to the rest of the civilized world. Americans are destroying their own and yet proudly and stupidly continuing to claim it is their right. It's a funny thing about rights; they shouldn't eviscerate other fundamental rights. Allowing gun rights to supersede other rights is a cost too high for any civilize nation to bear.
Here is hoping in 2013, the president, members of congress and all public officials grow a spine before we suffer another grievous mass shooting in America.
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