What does that even mean?
If you took a poll of 100 people, you might very well get 100 different opinions on what actually constitutes Common Sense Gun Control. (Heretofore written as CSGC.)
After every mass shooting now, we hear that phrase bantered about. "We need more Common Sense Gun Control!" It becomes a rallying cry -- primarily from the middle. Once you weed out the far right, who are against any kind of gun control at all, and you weed out the far left, who want to outlaw every gun ever made, including most BB and Cap guns, you wind up with those in the middle, both conservative and liberal, who start crying for more CSGC.
Problem is, nobody really knows what that means. If you lean right, you might say CSGC means better background checks. If you lean left, you might say CSGC means that we should start banning assault-style weapons (whatever those really are.)
In either case, it certainly is meant to imply that we, as a society, should begin limiting people's access to firearms in some fashion or another, either by weeding out those who we believe don't deserve to have a gun -- i.e., the mentally disabled, or those with criminal backgrounds -- or by outright denying the ability to buy anything north of a hunting shotgun, if that.
We've all seen the statistics. We've all read a gazillion different set of stats, from US cities, from Europe, from Canada, from Australia. For every stat that shows some positive movement in limiting guns, there's another stat that shows there's absolutely nothing definitive to prove that banning guns solves anything, or curbs any real crime. For every argument that states more gun laws will stop more murders, somebody still shoots up some people in a gun-free zone, some guy blows up people with bombs in FedEx boxes, some nut stabs 30 kids in China with butcher knife, some guy beats his wife to death with a baseball bat, or some religious zealots fly some planes into some buildings.
We've all heard, seen, and read all the statistics. And in the end, none of it seems to matter, let alone make any sense.
And so, after each new mass shooting, the media creates a rallying cry to latch on to some new item they think should be banned: silencers, bump stocks, magazine clips, AR-style rifles, and the list goes on. It's all an attempt to feel like we've accomplished something, to make us feel good about ourselves, to achieve some sort of CSGC. And it's done because they know this one truth: Guns are never gonna be outlawed in this country. Not now, not ever. The left knows it, and the right knows it. Democrats, Republicans, Conservatives, and Liberals. They all know it.
Its. Never. Going. To. Happen.
Nor should it, and there's a good reason for it.
Because the right to bear arms to protect ourselves is written into the Constitution of the United States. It is the 2nd Amendment. That means it falls right behind the 1st Amendment. That means our founding fathers thought it was important enough to list right behind our freedoms of speech, religion, and press.
Ah, yes, our founding fathers. Smart guys, them. And with a unique perspective on life that we cannot possibly fathom in our world of Facebook and sanctuary cities. They had a foresight beyond anything we can comprehend today, and the wherewithal to protect a principle that many of their day never dreamed possible.
If you took a poll of 100 people, you might very well get 100 different opinions on what actually constitutes Common Sense Gun Control. (Heretofore written as CSGC.)
After every mass shooting now, we hear that phrase bantered about. "We need more Common Sense Gun Control!" It becomes a rallying cry -- primarily from the middle. Once you weed out the far right, who are against any kind of gun control at all, and you weed out the far left, who want to outlaw every gun ever made, including most BB and Cap guns, you wind up with those in the middle, both conservative and liberal, who start crying for more CSGC.
Problem is, nobody really knows what that means. If you lean right, you might say CSGC means better background checks. If you lean left, you might say CSGC means that we should start banning assault-style weapons (whatever those really are.)
In either case, it certainly is meant to imply that we, as a society, should begin limiting people's access to firearms in some fashion or another, either by weeding out those who we believe don't deserve to have a gun -- i.e., the mentally disabled, or those with criminal backgrounds -- or by outright denying the ability to buy anything north of a hunting shotgun, if that.
We've all seen the statistics. We've all read a gazillion different set of stats, from US cities, from Europe, from Canada, from Australia. For every stat that shows some positive movement in limiting guns, there's another stat that shows there's absolutely nothing definitive to prove that banning guns solves anything, or curbs any real crime. For every argument that states more gun laws will stop more murders, somebody still shoots up some people in a gun-free zone, some guy blows up people with bombs in FedEx boxes, some nut stabs 30 kids in China with butcher knife, some guy beats his wife to death with a baseball bat, or some religious zealots fly some planes into some buildings.
We've all heard, seen, and read all the statistics. And in the end, none of it seems to matter, let alone make any sense.
And so, after each new mass shooting, the media creates a rallying cry to latch on to some new item they think should be banned: silencers, bump stocks, magazine clips, AR-style rifles, and the list goes on. It's all an attempt to feel like we've accomplished something, to make us feel good about ourselves, to achieve some sort of CSGC. And it's done because they know this one truth: Guns are never gonna be outlawed in this country. Not now, not ever. The left knows it, and the right knows it. Democrats, Republicans, Conservatives, and Liberals. They all know it.
Its. Never. Going. To. Happen.
Nor should it, and there's a good reason for it.
Because the right to bear arms to protect ourselves is written into the Constitution of the United States. It is the 2nd Amendment. That means it falls right behind the 1st Amendment. That means our founding fathers thought it was important enough to list right behind our freedoms of speech, religion, and press.
Ah, yes, our founding fathers. Smart guys, them. And with a unique perspective on life that we cannot possibly fathom in our world of Facebook and sanctuary cities. They had a foresight beyond anything we can comprehend today, and the wherewithal to protect a principle that many of their day never dreamed possible.
And before you join the nutballs who believe our founding fathers only had muskets on their minds, or those who believe their only concern were the British soldiers, you need to learn that muskets and the Redcoats were merely the symptoms of the bigger principle they sought to protect. Protecting muskets and defending against the British are akin to treating a runny nose and a cough in your battle against the flu.
The 2nd Amendment of the United States Bill of Rights has nothing to do with muskets, or the British, or hunting, or target shooting. No, the right to bear arms has everything to do with the individual citizen protecting himself against an oppressive, tyrannical government. By any means possible. Plain and simple. Period. End of story.
Thomas Jefferson wrote this to James Madison in a letter dated December 20, 1787: "What country can preserve its liberties if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance. Let them take arms."
The 2nd Amendment of the United States Bill of Rights has nothing to do with muskets, or the British, or hunting, or target shooting. No, the right to bear arms has everything to do with the individual citizen protecting himself against an oppressive, tyrannical government. By any means possible. Plain and simple. Period. End of story.
Thomas Jefferson wrote this to James Madison in a letter dated December 20, 1787: "What country can preserve its liberties if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance. Let them take arms."
You see, our founding fathers lived in a society where the government could come to your door, take away your guns, and imprison you at will, for no reason at all. And it happened all the time. And in their struggle for independence, they understood that it would never be enough simply to create a law stating the government wasn't allowed to do that anymore. They realized that a provision would need to be written into that law that ensured the citizenry had the ability to forcibly resist the government when they attempted to circumvent that law, which they would surely one day try to do.
Thus the 2nd Amendment. They wanted the law to state unequivocally that if the government ever tried to usurp our rights, the citizenry not only had the legal ability to resist it, but also the firepower.
And that included ANY type of arms the citizen saw fit with which to defend himself. The most powerful weaponry of the day was the cannon. Under the 2nd Amendment, people were allowed to own cannons, and many individuals, and certainly many businessmen, indeed did.
You see, the 2nd Amendment wasn't about a particular weapon, or a particular foe. It was about a concept. A principle.
And that included ANY type of arms the citizen saw fit with which to defend himself. The most powerful weaponry of the day was the cannon. Under the 2nd Amendment, people were allowed to own cannons, and many individuals, and certainly many businessmen, indeed did.
You see, the 2nd Amendment wasn't about a particular weapon, or a particular foe. It was about a concept. A principle.
Sure, you might say that one lonely citizen could never resist our modern military weaponry, and you'd be right. But A) you're assuming American soldiers would actually follow the orders of turning their guns against their own people, and B) you're forgetting that it wouldn't be one citizen fighting back. It would be millions.
Both of those scenarios, of course, along with countless others, encapsulate implications we don't even want to think about in our society, but nevertheless were accounted for by our founding fathers, because they DID have to deal with that very scenario. And so, a bunch of citizens, with musketry and cannon, and with freedom on their minds, did indeed band together with their arms and defeated what was at the time one of the most powerful militaries on the planet.
So, yeah, it does happen.
Regardless, the 2nd Amendment was written with a very specific purpose in mind, and for a very specific reason, and that purpose and reason remain relevant even today, maybe even more so in our current society than ever before. We have, quite literally, been stripped of one right after another virtually since the Constitution was established. The federal government and various states have indeed limited what types of weaponry citizens can individually own. (Joe Citizen doesn't need military grade weapons, they say, even though that is exactly what the founding fathers had.) Not to mention the hundreds of other rights and liberties that have been taken away over the years. We have allowed it to happen, having voted for the very members of our government who have been instrumental in eroding those rights. It only stands to reason, therefore, that they would eventually get around to trying to completely take away our right to bear arms.
But what of personal protection? What of crime, as it relates to CSGC? Well, seems old Thomas Jefferson had some insight to that as well. In Commonplace Book, he wrote, "The laws that forbid the carrying of arms are laws of such a nature. They disarm only those who are neither inclined nor determined to commit crimes... Such laws make things worse for the assaulted and better for the assailants; they serve rather to encourage than to prevent homicides, for an unarmed man may be attacked with greater confidence than an armed man."
Even Jefferson knew the only way to stop a bad man with a gun is with a good guy with a gun. Banning guns only stops good guys. It doesn't stop bad guys. A body of laws is good for a civilized society. It helps separate the good from the bad. It gives us leverage and justification to punish those who want to harm others. Laws are good when they are used to help establish law and order. But in the end, they're really only definitions of good and bad. They don't really stop those who are intent on breaking them anyway. Yes, they exist as a deterrent, and it is true they serve that purpose for a great deal of people. But they won't stop those whose hearts are truly set on hurting someone else.
We know this to be true. As a society, we know it in our guts. And yet we try... we still try to legislate a lot of things that simply cannot, by nature, be legislated. You can't legislate morality, as they say, and so the laws will only stop the moral, and allow the immoral to run unchecked.
And so it is why we will never completely ban guns. Many of those teenagers who marched this past weekend will come to not only know this as they grow up and mature, but will come to abhor the very idea they protested for. As they grow to realize the realities of the world we live in, most of them will come to believe in the value of, and the need for, an armed citizenry.
It is interesting that our country not only survived, but thrived, for over a century and a half with nary a hint of a call for gun control. It is only in the last several decades -- and if you want to be specific, it can almost be traced back to the Reagan assassination attempt -- that we, as a society have begun to call for gun control of any kind. And it is only since that time that we see a rise in mass shootings and the like. The first real major piece of gun control legislation went on the books with the Brady Bill in 1993. Since that time, while overall gun murders have gone down, mass shootings as we know them have essentially increased, even as more and more gun legislation has gone into place. We have more CSGC measures on the books than at anytime in our nation's history, and yet the largest mass murder in our history happened just six short months ago.
Wonder why that is?
It's because the notion of CSGC advances a political narrative. Liberals know guns are never going to be banned. They really don't even want them banned. But they also know that if they can ride that horse, and manipulate young minds in this country, they can achieve political goals that cannot be achieved on their merits. They are indoctrinating a voting base, under the guise of safety for our children (while Liberal-backed Planned Parenthood murders millions of babies every year).
They are, in effect, wiping our runny noses to get what they want, knowing full well they will never cure the flu.
