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The awesome, life-shattering power of guns
Alternate title: The Awesome, truth-shattering power of a fascist agenda. This presentation was published in a state which only two years ago passed one of the most draconian universal background check laws in the nation. It just goes to show that the appetite of fascists such as the writer for your personal property will never go unwhetted until the gun owner is dead and his property belongs to the state.This is part of an effort by the anti-gun lobby to "de-legitimize" guns. Having finally figured out that they're not going to win any legislative battles in the current political landscape, they're working 1) to restrict gun makers in various ways, 2) to find just enough judges, including five on the Supreme Court, to "reinterpret" the 2A in just the right way (after which it can never be interpreted differently again, don't you know), and 3) to change ordinary society so that gun owners are seen as deviant or illegitimate citizens. I'll bet dollars to doughnuts that if you looked carefully at the author, you'd find someone who is involved in this process. Via Hershel Smith By Todd Hubbard Special to The Times GUNS are awesome machines. Built with great precision, advanced over generations, they are powerful tools for their purpose. Practicing with them brings the pleasure and satisfaction that comes with honing difficult skills. The enforcers of our laws use them to stop the criminals who threaten our lives and property. Our military uses them to kill and contain the violent enemies of our nation. As with any fine machine, looking at a gun, possessing one or working with one is exciting and empowering. If you think owning a gun is anything other than a responsibility, you probably should not ever own a gun. Possessing a gun rather is humbling. In the hands of civilians, they are not protection from crime. Unless you wear a uniform with a badge or a service patch on it, the gun you carry is more likely to kill you or someone you know or love than it is to kill anyone who threatens you or your loved ones. The “good guy with a gun” who will protect us, rather than threaten us, is the man or woman who has been screened, trained, authorized and empowered by us to do the job. Anyone else, no matter how well-intentioned, is an amateur at best and a hazard to the rest of us at worst. The past 40 years in the United States has been a massive experiment in the theory that a highly armed citizenry will make us safer, and the experiment has been an abysmal failure. Cops can't be everywhere; neither can the military. And the dirty secret to private gun ownership: it is not up to an individual gun owner to stop crime. It is up to the individual committing the crime to stop the crime. If I witness a crime while carrying, it is up to me, in a practical and tactical sense to decide whether I will even attempt to stop the act using a firearm. My first inclination is to not draw at all, unless I'm being fired on. YMMV. In the hands of civilians, guns are not a bulwark against tyranny. If you believe that guns are a remedy against an oppressive government, then you are on the side of the black man who perceived “his” people being abused by government agents and chose to strike back with a gun. You are on the side of the troubled white man who, 52 years earlier, wanted to bring down the elected government he viewed as corrupt. Dallas is what Second Amendment remedies look like in practice: dead police officers, a dead president. If this lawyer had read any of the articles about the Constitution published at the time, he would know that citizens are the bulwark against tyranny. The recognition of the right to keep and bear arms, and the restrictions against government efforts to stop citizen disarmament was put there for that reason. That the Dallas shooter sought to even things up at the expense of the five kops he shot in no way invalidates the existence of guns as an element in dealing effectively with a runaway government and an elected tyranny. Many of you, my friends and family, own firearms. I do not want you to surrender your guns. I do not want the government to confiscate them. But I do want you to help address the problem of so many deaths caused by these awesome machines. An informed, engaged electorate is what protects us from tyranny. Stop pretending this problem does not exist or that the only solution is more guns. Do not hide behind “originalist” arguments about the Constitution’s Second Amendment. Whenever a serf, such as the individual posing as a lawyer writing, says he doesn't want the government to confiscate firearms, that simply means he wants the government to confiscate firearms so badly he is willing to blatantly lie about his intentions. Late Saturday night, I was awake when I heard multiple sirens in the distance. I felt that frisson of fear that every parent of a young person feels when you let him or her out into the world. Has there been an accident? Was somebody drinking, being a reckless kid? But I immediately relaxed, knowing that on this night both of my boys were already safe at home. Those sirens represented someone else’s pain. In the morning, I learned three young people were dead, a fourth wounded and a dozen scarred by terror. My boys knew most of them, had gone to school with all of them and had played ball with some of them. Another young person had possessed an awesome machine, a machine that no doubt had given him a sense of satisfaction, safety and power. A neighbor’s security camera recorded the mere seconds it took for that machine in the hands of that young man to break so many hearts forever. The firearm had not given him anything. It is an inanimate object. The shooter gave himself that sense of "satisfaction, safety and power," an indication alone which should have been the first hint he should not have had the gun to begin with. But the government can't be there to instill in the mind of the shooter his responsibility with regard to owning a gun. Only the shooter can, and he failed in that most basic responsibility. Three lives are gone, three families shattered and dozens of lives changed forever. These are awesome machines. Guns are tools to be used for a specific purpose. They are not awesome in any sense. Just tools. In the hand of an individual being fired on, they are indispensable tools. In the hands of an individual who chose to exert his ill onto his target, they are the second best argument for individual gun ownership.. Todd Hubbard is a legal-aid attorney and resident of Mukilteo. Posted by: badanov 2016-08-11 |
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