Firearms

9 III 2023: Second-Amendment Chaos

The undefined right to freedom of speech has been misunderstood, misapplied, and abused. So also has the Second Amendment’s “right of the people to keep and bear arms.” America, with its 122 guns for every 100 souls is a paradise for firearms manufacturers and the horror and laughing-stock of the civilized world. 

The Second Amendment protects a right to keep and bear arms in support of “a well regulated Militia.” Nothing is said about stand your ground, open and closed carry, automatic weapons, butt stocks, and all the other excesses of American gun culture, but the Second Amendment has been stretched thin to cover all these and much more, and more energy and cash have been expended in defense of an inflated and elaborated understanding of “gun rights” than in defense of any other rights guaranteed us by the Bill of Rights.  

The consequence of this has been a neglect of regulation of firearms that would be unthinkable in any sophisticated society. Did the founding fathers even imagine that America would become so degenerate that its courts and legislatures would turn a provision meant to create a militia into a license for childishness and criminality?

17 I 2023: Do unregulated guns prop up white supremacy?

Among today’s headlines:

from St. Louis Today: “Guns in St. Louis are increasingly semi-automatic – with higher caliber bullets, too”

from huffpost: “Police: 8 People Shot, 1 Critical At Florida MLK Day Event”

I have read that black Americans make up 12.5 percent of the population, but have been the victims in 61 percent of gun homicides. And I wonder if the laxity or absence of gun regulation is intended to maintain white supremacy in the U.S.

Implementing a policy does not always mean making things happen, but can also involve letting things happen. I have long believed that America’s failure to prevent the importation, manufacture, and distribution of narcotics is not the result of chronic incompetence, but is an intentional neglect meant to disable America’s black communities.

So too I wonder if the laxity of firearm regulations and the utter failure to control the traffic in illegal firearms are similarly part of a plan to inhibit the development of a cohesive, economically strong, and politically powerful black community, and to instill contempt and fear of blacks in the wider population.

Is this paranoia?

2 I 2021: Just because a man is crazy …

I read that a former convict, Cody A. Cape of Omaha, under investigation for hunting deer illegally in a federal wildlife refuge, was planning to murder the Federal Wildlife Officer involved in the investigation.

Cape had done prison time, is a scofflaw, is hostile to police, is, to say the least, erratic in his handling of guns, and is obviously mentally unbalanced. Should such a person be allowed to own firearms? Well, common sense says No! 

But, come on, this is America, after all, and if we take away Cody Cape’s guns we would in fairness have to confiscate the firearms of thousands upon thousands of gun owners who are just like Cody. We’d have to disarm the so-called militias, disarm the wanna-be “soldiers of fortune” who show up in “tactical” accoutrements making a display of weapons at public events, disarm the throngs of mentally unstable men who roam our inner cities and shoot first and think later, if at all.

I could go on, but let me conclude by saying: If we were to confiscate guns belonging to citizens like Cody Cape, it just wouldn’t be America any more.