After Newtown, this is Sick—and Sickening
Assault weapons have only one purpose: to kill the largest number of people in the shortest possible time. And yet, the Senate leadership just pulled the limited assault weapons ban out of the new gun control legislation. Apparently they cannot even figure out that we don’t have to put up with them. Either they are too intimidated by thuggish pressure from the NRA or they are actually in favor of people walking down the street with enough firepower to take out a whole schoolyard full of kids. And where is the pressure from honest citizens to regulate these ultradangerous weapons? If Congress has no spine on its own, it needs to find its backbone through citizen pressure for an assault weapons ban.
I see no justification for refusal to control assault weapons in the Second Amendment. On the contrary, I see that regulation actually comes before the right to bear arms. Grammatically, the phrase “well regulated militia” is the focus point of the paragraph—the justification for what follows. It could be restated as “BECAUSE a well-regulated militia is important, citizens may possess guns.” Here’s the complete text:
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.
Seems to me, the Second Amendment actually creates an obligation to regulate weaponry. I don’t see how regulating semiautomatic assault weapons is any more a contradiction than banning fully automatic weapons (which have been illegal for most of a century). And those regulations could clearly include banning weapons of mass murder, background checks, and the rest of it.
Do we really want more Newtowns and Auroras and Virginia Techs and Columbines? Isn’t it time we approached this with some common sense? After all, the government regulates who can cut hair, for goodness sake!
