One of the commentors made the following remark:
“…let’s give the olde white guys credit in 1787: they’re thinking about muzzleloading black powder rifles…”
To which I replied that I think it’s even simpler than that; these guys were thinking with their wallets. And, to a great extent, their “republican” ideology. It wasn't the weapons. It was the fiscals and the politics.
The thing the gunsuckers always elide is the first section of that amendment: “A well-regulated militia…” The rich guys who wrote the foundational documents 1) were appalled at the expense of a standing army (and navy, which is insane when you think of how important maritime commerce was to the infant U.S., but, Jefferson, FFS…) and 2) were deeply committed to the idea that a standing army was a “danger to liberty”. All those soldiers with no citizen cred, just waiting for the demagogue to come along and coup with them?
No way, Citizen Jose’!
So their idea was that the Good People of the country would flock to the standards when danger threatened and form “the nation in arms” (and keeping in mind that their model were the colonial militias, which largely kept their weapons (and almost all their propellant – the black powder) in a local “magazine” where it would be issued when that alarm was sounded).
So it wasn’t even the notion of every swinging richard running around with a military-grade firearm that would have bugged them. It was the notion that that firearm was for using on their fellow citizens for random whackadoodle reasons and that wasn’t a good reason to keep those firearms locked up in the magazines.
And let’s not EVEN go into the notion that they wanted every Joe and Molly to have a bang-stick to prevent “tyranny” coming from the new U.S. government, because the moment that happens Shay’s and the whiskey rebels will need a moment to whip the fuck up on your head.
Nope. The current firearms priapism is a symptom of the prion disease that has eaten the brains of waaaaayyyyy too many Americans, including nearly all “conservatives”.
You'd think that at this point...
But, no. I mean, Sandy Hook! Rando homicidal looney guns down adorable kiddies. That doesn't shake you? You insist it was a fake, or "crisis actors", or whatever?
The crazy has gone too deep, and there's no digging it out now.
(And the title of this post comes from Jim Wright's series on this whole nonsense. They're archived here and are all worth a read, as is his "Bang Bang Sanity" essay that discusses some commonsense ideas that will help put a lid on this nonsense.
Not that We the People will.)
2 comments:
Ninth Circuit says No right to carry guns in public
Sadly, this will be appealed to the SCOTUS, which will reverse the decision.
Which, obviously, is ridiculously idiotic. We already know the result when everyone swaggers around strapped; Somalia, or the feuding familts in Romeo and Juliet.
Do you bite your fucking thumb at me, sir? You bet your fucking ass I do and here's a bellyful of fucking lead to go with it!
I really wish that there was some sanity remaining on the radical Right that would recognize this as the nonsense it is. No, 0f course you don't have the "right" to go armed everywhere. That's effectively the whole "your right to swing your fist ends at the tip of my nose." If you're armed, any possible interaction with you - or barely any interaction at all - carries the risk of being lethal to me. So MY best option is to go armed myself, so YOU fear and "respect" me and will hesitate to use your 9mm muscle to push me around.
No. The basis of a civil society is the opposite; the disarmament of the commons, so that everyone is armed only with what Nature armed them with. If you're some kind of Kung Fu master? Well, I'm willing to take my chances with that. A touchy asshole with a Beretta stuffed down your trousers?
Not so much.
This issue has become SO poisoned, though, that not even commonsense is common about it anymore.
This ruling will not stand up.
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