The times we find ourselves in with mass shootings and an excess of gun violence did not take a few days, weeks or months to evolve. It has slowly gathered speed as we became more urban and more culturally diverse.
The 2nd amendment that was added to the U.S. Constitution was not out of fear of home invasion by criminal elements as much as it was to arm local militias in the defense of our country should another foreign power like Great Britain attempt to over run our nascent nation in the late 18th century. Those living on the frontiers also needed a means of protecting themselves from marauding attacks from native Americans who were becoming threatened by western European expansion in their homeland. This notion has been lost on many gun zealots over the last few decades thanks in large part to a shift in leadership at the National Rifle Association (NRA) in the late 1970’s. But this is only one aspect of the problem that now threatens security in our homes and neighborhoods unlike any other time.
There will always be those on opposite ends of the gun issue that won’t agree to compromise but it is essential that we understand that there at least 4 distinct components to this mass shooting epidemic that exists at rates in no other place on this planet except the U.S. These are things that reasonable people can agree on and work together to achieve without fear of losing any fundamental rights. The difficult part will be to get them to coalesce in rapid order to achieve a state of sanity, inhibiting future slaughters of innocents at the hands of people emotional imbalanced for reasons that differ from shooter to shooter.
Though my politics tend to lean liberal I have learned over time that my conservative friends are not hostile about achieving common goals and need to be listened too rather than ignored completely. I myself after all was raised by a conservative set of values as a Catholic growing up in Texas.
John Wayne was a childhood hero of mine. I used to enjoy the musical version of the Lord’s Prayer that led off each morning in school. Homosexuality was an abhorrent behavior to me and as a white male I didn’t find segregation abnormal. I hunted on occasions but never owned a firearm. I believed in heaven, hell and the God of all creation and was diligently conscience that my guardian angel (I named him Raphael) was always looking over my shoulder at all times.
But the fact that my world was a tightly closed circle to things I later discovered didn’t pose the threat I thought they did was bound to come crumbling down once I became an adult, traveled and met diverse people with a different upbringing. There was no social media as I was growing up and only 3 television networks provided the news for the entire nation. We trusted our government leaders pretty much and seldom questioned authority. Drugs were a decade away in my earliest youth though smoking cigarettes was cool as was experimenting with alcohol.
Time allows us to grow and develop and in so doing we come face to face with our ingrained beliefs and are forced to change in light of new experiences, albeit grudgingly, or resist in large measure so all we had come to know is not totally lost. It is this condition we experience early that allows to us expand our often simple but sometimes harsh and inexplicable view of the world.
We can choose one of two roads. Dig in your heels and resist nearly all manifestations of change or slowly give way to a world that breaks down the protective barriers we were raised with. We all become Tevye at some point of our maturity. One way leads us to go beyond all that we held near and dear – a fearful prospect for many. The other intensifies those traditions as it blocks out and even vilifies the realities of that different world.
It is these two worlds that have now collided and created the social and political gridlock we face today. One that sadly prevents us from addressing serious issues that grow more alarming each hour, day, and month that we ignore them. The anger that both sides hold towards each other seems righteous to each and may even seem immoral at the thought of any compromise. The ultimate result if this divide continues is that we begin to diminish from the strong society it has taken us a few centuries to evolve from to one that consumes itself with the sort of chaos that has led other great nations to be swallowed up by the rising powers of their time.
I would like to take the time here then to address the serious issue of gun violence that is so prevalent across our nation and one that is now likely to kill more people than auto accidents.
If I might add to “Those living on the frontiers also needed a means of protecting themselves from marauding attacks from native Americans who were becoming threatened by western European expansion in their homeland.” England basically ditched the American colonies because they could not prevent the Americans from moving westward (into, ha ha, French territory, ha ha) and stealing Indian land, while killing off all of the Indians. The militias need to protect the country were already authorized as state militias elsewhere in the Constitution. Therefore the Second Amendment was there to support private militias, used to defend “settlers” who were living on land they should not be. Secondly, private militias were used to enforce slavery in the south and elsewhere.
Now that we have basically killed off most of the Native Americans and stolen their land and slavery has been abolished, albeit the aftereffects are still with us, we have no further use for the Second Amendment. We no longer have Native Americans and black slaves to shoot, so now e are shooting one another, our children, etc.
I hate to sound so harsh but the truth is the truth. The bushwah of the Second Amendment is there to forestall government tyranny is indeed that: bushwah. The idea never entered the Constitution drafters minds.
“I hate to sound so harsh but the truth is the truth”
True that Steve. In my 4th component article I will discuss how our genocide of the native Americans, along with slavery and the Christian’s wrathful God as laid out in the bible are precursors for our culture of violence.
Great to see you around, Larry!
Whenever I see American’s claim you can’t touch the 2nd Amendment I’m reminded of Jefferson’s words:
Wow! Great Jefferson quote John. Haven’t seen that one in all my research. Will tuck it away for later use. Thanks
It’s actually on the wall (in stone, literally) in his Washington DC monument. Perhaps some of your lawmakers should take a bus trip down and spend a moment there 😉
It’s from a letter to H. Tompkinson (AKA Samuel Kercheval), July 12, 1816. This is the full text:
“I am certainly not an advocate for frequent and untried changes in laws and constitutions. I think moderate imperfections had better be borne with; because, when once known, we accommodate ourselves to them, and find practical means of correcting their ill effects. But I know also, that laws and institutions must go hand in hand with the progress of the human mind. As that becomes more developed, more enlightened, as new discoveries are made, new truths disclosed, and manners and opinions change with the change of circumstances, institutions must advance also, and keep pace with the times. We might as well require a man to wear still the coat which fitted him when a boy, as civilized society to remain ever under the regimen of their barbarous ancestors.”
Here’s the full letter. Interesting read
http://teachingamericanhistory.org/library/document/letter-to-samuel-kercheval/
Thanks John. I think I’ll use this quote to preface my next article which discusses the need to put the 2nd amendment in its proper historical context and take it off of its lofty pedestal that the NRA has placed it on.
I wish you the very best of luck. It does seem like something might be possible. Those kids are admirable.
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Good to see you back, Woodgate. All the radio silence had me worried that you had died again. Stop dying, dammit!
I remember the tail end of the era you describe. I’d give both my nuts to go back to those days.
There was reasonably civil discourse based on largely agreed upon facts that most folks had a basic grasp of. For example, even the dumbest kids in my poor, rural, elementary school had a basic “headline” grasp of what was in the news. That’s because (in the pre-500 channel universe) if you had the TV on at 6-7PM (or morning, noon & 11PM) you had NO other choice but to watch professional newscasts produced by experience staff trying to produce actual NEWS…not ratings generating info-tainment designed to increase the profits of mega-corporations. (See: the visionary film Network) Almost every radio station had quality updates every hour and newspapers came to everyone’s door (some places even got 2 versions a day). And you could count upon even the most biased ones telling you the truth.
Almost all of that has been eviscerated. We now live in a hellscape of utter bullshit. It’s a post-fact society full of angry, aggressive, shoot-first imbeciles (both figuratively & literally) who don’t-not-never pay no attention to nothin’ they don’t want to. For most, it means they’re completely ignorant of everything other than the latest celebrity feud in The Twit Zone, or 3D Virtual Porn.
For others, they still know virtually nothing. And most of what they know is literally “Fake News”. But that doesn’t stop them from ranting, raving and threatening everybody who disagrees. The Web-pipes tells them what they want to hear and fills their empty little skulls full of unmitigated bullshit and then tells them they need to fight.
“Journalistic Integrity” has become two unrelated words nobody knows the meaning of either anymore.
An example of what passes for “public information” from one of my favourite shows…
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