The NRA has a list of people
and organizations that are “anti-gun.”
It includes such radical leftist organizations as the American Academy
of Pediatrics, the Central Conference of American Rabbis, the Mennonite Central
Committee-Washington Office, the National Association of Secondary School Principals,
the YWCA, A & M Records, the Kansas City Chiefs, the Sara Lee Corporation,
St. Louis University, and the Christian Science Monitor. Also on the list are opponents of the Constitution
and America like C. Everett Koop, Vinny Testaverde, and Christie Brinkley. In the eyes of the NRA these are radicals,
presumably because that gun control legislation is important and should be
enforced. Either you see the right to
have a gun as an absolute right, never to be meaningfully regulated, or you are
the enemy. This is an unfortunate
position, and one that has no grounding in the Constitution, the rulings of the
Supreme Court, or common sense. This you’re
with us or you’re against us mentality works in Westerns, but it doesn’t work
in real life in the year 2013. We need
to come together and work to make school shootings less common, gun deaths in
our cities a rarity, and suicides using firearms uncommon. We can only do that if we see ourselves as
working together to solve these problems, as opposed to lining up for a
shootout at the O.K. Corral. We can only
do this if we recognize that gun control is one part of the solutions we are
looking for. We can only do this if we
stop listing our enemies, and start listing our suggestions and the premises
which support our conclusions.
OK, I’m going to try to work with the gun nuts. Here goes…
ReplyDeletePeople hear selectively. For example, when I hear the Second Amendment read the words that stick in my mind are: “well regulated.” Yes, I would favor a “well regulated” community of gun owners. The gun lobby seems to hear, most clearly, the word “Milita.” OK, I don’t necessarily want to change the constitution over this word. As a gun owner (I own four guns), I could consider my self a de facto member of the “American Militia”, or the “Michigan Militia”, as long it is well regulated, i.e. universal background checks, no assault weapons, etc.
I think we’ve got something here. The gun lobby could feel good about securing a fuller implementation of the Second Amendment and I would fell a little safer.