Old laws
So I think it’s about time for me to get back into doing a bit of social/political commentary on here rather than just complaining about how poorly my students are doing. And the topic of choice is going to be the second amendment to the US constitution.
A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.
I’m sure some of you may be wondering why this is my topic of choice; mainly the reason is that I’ve been hearing about it on the news on my drive to work each morning. A quick summary is that the city of Washington has had a ban on handgun ownership for years now, something which it looks as though it may be reversed by the Supreme Court this year.
Now I could go off on a rant about how owning a gun isn’t going to protect you from anything. Seriously, when was the last time you heard of a civilian protecting themselves with a gun? Yeah, I can’t think of any cases, though I can think of many incidents when armed, and well trained, police officers were killed. Clearly a gun is not a viable form of defense.
What is ridiculous in this whole process is the blind faith that seems to be placed in the constitution. Now, I’m not advocating a complete dismissal of the constitution, I just think that it should be looked at with a more critical eye. After all, some things they did get right, the whole freedom of speech part for one. But others kind of missed the mark, namely the part with coloured people getting ⅗ of a vote. So I don’t think that an argument about gun ownership should be limited to the assumptions and interpretations of two sentences written over 200 years ago. After all, the people that wrote this weren’t anything special, sure Franklin was pretty smart, but in an age of muzzle loadied muskets who could have predicted uzis, grenade launchers or even handguns?
The deification of the writers of the constitution is rather odd to me as a scientist. Sure, we have our heros in science, Newton, Einstein, Hawkins and many others, we respect their work and achievements, but when the time comes for their theories to be retired in the face of new evidence we accept their limitations. I think it’s about time that the limitations of the constitutional authors is accepted.
posted by Christopher Robin at 4:24 p.m.
2 Comments:
People often misunderstand the purpose of gun control; they tend to think that gun control is supposed to make it hard for criminals to get guns (which of course it doesn't, since criminals ignore laws by definition.) These people usually come back with the annoyingly obvious retort: "If you make guns illegal, then only criminals will have guns. Is that what you want?"
Yes! Exactly!
The point of gun control laws isn't to keep guns out of the hands of criminals. It's to keep guns out of the hands of the general public.
Why? Because the criminals will have guns either way--but in real life, they generally only shoot at other people who have guns. People without guns may get threatened, robbed, or bullied--but they usually don't get killed unless they try to pull out a firearm of their own.
A gun is much worse than simply "no protection"; it's actually very dangerous to its owner. If you have one, then there's a non-zero chance that you will actually attempt to use it, which in most cases means your chances of surviving a dangerous situation just dropped dramatically.
Barring a few, rare, action-movie exceptions, in real life the best way to deal with someone who's threatening you with a gun is to just give them whatever they want. Trying to pull out your own gun just means that one or both of you is probably gonna get shot.
*****
If people were logical, you could convince them to support gun control simply by pointing out the dramatically lower homicide rates in *every single country* that has banned personal ownership of handguns. But good luck doing that. From what I understand, many Americans LOVE their right to bear arms.
I think you should control the proliferation of firearms for the same reason you control the proliferation of nuclear weapons: the fewer of them that there are out there, the less likely they are to be used. Simple. :)
11:52 p.m.
I agree with you fully, I'm always stunned that people think that having a gun will somehow keep them safe.
4:35 p.m.
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