The Ragged Edge Take My Gun After You Void The Constitution

My view

Lots of wild-eyed talk going around about gun control these days. On the one hand, the gentle humanitarian liberals bleat for safe streets, citing statistics of carnage and mayhem on every corner of urban America, for the children, oh the dear innocent children. On the other hand you have the inbred, snaggle-toothed, alcoholic, gun-totin’ rednecks, all beered up oblivious to anything but blood, fighting and killing.

Thank you mainstream media for framing the discussion so eloquently. If selling papers by pandering to the base instincts of humanity were exclusively your offense, you might well be forgiven (for greed). But cloaking your passion for socialism in contrived, distorted social issues doesn’t condemn socialism, just your cowardice for not being willing to discuss it in an honest forum.

Why would I spend a lot of time and energy in the gun fight? I don’t. As founder of the Tenth Amendment Coalition of Benewah County, I sought a conduit through which citizens could hear a perspective other than the media’s and be provided a common voice before their elected officials.

We have organized committees on solid waste, water quality, wetlands management, etc., all with little attention or response. When we took a stand on the gun issue (we proposed a county ordinance requiring a gun and ammunition in every home), we were barraged by media from New York to California, with most of it reported much like the version above.

A good case can be made for regulating guns in America today. There are many among us who have forfeited their right to bear arms. They haven’t displayed sufficient wisdom or discipline. I believe it’s time to do something about it.

But let’s lower the decibels and raise the dialogue above the realms of sophist rhetoric. FBI statistics tell us that only two-tenths of one percent of all firearms in America are ever used in the commission of a crime. That leaves 99.8 percent of them in the hands of law-abiding citizens.

Yet through some amazing form of logic we hear the shrill cry of those calling for the complete and total disarmament of everyone but the police and the armed forces.

Ya boy, then we could nestle safely in the arms of government to protect us. Now there’s a comforting thought.

First on the agenda to revise our laws regarding gun use, we must address the authority for law, the Constitution. Now and always, it has read, “the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed”.

Yes, I know, the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled, “blah, blah, choke, gag, spleen, whittle and spit.” Nonetheless, today you must ask for permission, (turning a right into a privilege). You fill out the forms; you wait for approval; you pay for the permit - if you qualify, if it’s the right kind of gun, if it’s the right kind of ammunition. This isn’t necessarily bad, it’s just wholesale perversion of the Constitution. That worries me.

I repeat, let’s take up the gun issue in a lawful sequence, first by addressing the Constitution, and after that you will have little argument from me. As long as we wink and smirk at the Second Amendment, we undermine the integrity of the entire document. Now try to defend your rights to free speech, press, travel, worship, etc., using the battered Constitution as your foundation.

What’s the real gun problem in America? It’s the third-generation welfare child, (thank you Great Society) whose life on the street is such a hell stench that the threat of prison is no deterrent. As we continue to deny them a good education with its promise of honest work and dignity, we continue to fill our streets with men desperate enough to kill you for a way out.

Disarm America? Don’t let them fool you, that’s a formula for tyranny, not safe streets.