For years, the National Rifle Association and its leader Wayne LaPierre masterfully convinced NRA members, much of the public, Congress and enough U.S. Supreme Court justices that any regulations regarding guns violated the 2nd Amendment of the Constitution.
Today, some school children will tell you that the most important amendment in the Constitution is the 2ndamendment. That’s quite an accomplishment, and it’s the result of the NRA’s decades-long strategy to put a stranglehold on debate, deliberation and discussion about gun violence.
To ensure cold hard facts never interfere with their argument about guns, the 2ndAmendment and their cherished “cold, dead hands” slogan, the NRA and its supporters in Congress and the White House adopted a law to stifle questions. They blocked the Center for Disease Control and Prevention from researching the gun violence that has long plagued this nation.
Gun violence in America today, whether from semi-automatic weapons or handguns, is a testament to the NRA’s achievement in ensuring anyone at any time can have almost any gun they choose. According to various sources, there’s at least one gun for each of the country’s 317 million men, women and children, more than a quarter-billion guns.
With that many guns and easy access to them, is it really that difficult to understand why mass shootings occur monthly, if not weekly, in this country? Why gun violence is a leading cause of death in the United States today. http://www.businessinsider.com/mass-shooting-gun-statistics-2018-2
Is it really that difficult to understand the anger and determination of the high school students in Parkland, Fla., who grew up with gun violence in schools only to then experience gun violence as they were about to embark on their life’s journeys?
Is it really that difficult to understand the anger in a majority of voters when a gunman with a semi-automatic weapon murders 20 six- and seven-year old students only to have Congress refuse to do anything but offer the meaningless phrase of “thoughts and prayers”?
The NRA knows what the answers to these questions mean for their organization – a loss of power and money. This is what the gun control argument is all about – power and money. The NRA stands to lose much. So, they block CDC research and attack high school students.
The NRA’s ruse is that guns are enshrined in the 2ndAmendment, which never mentions the word “gun.” In fact, nowhere in the Constitution is the word gun found. Most constitutional scholars and jurists have long argued that “right of the people to keep and bear arms” refers to state militias. Arms could mean anything, not just guns.
In fact, guns hold no more special place in the Constitution than a box of cereal or any other product that we, as Americans, have a right to produce, and that the government – the one that’s by the people and for the people – has a right to regulate to ensure safety and security. Yet, the NRA venerate guns as a sort of sacred instrument of freedom and democracy.
The Parkland high school students leading the March for Our Lives movement want to see a well-regulated gun industry, they want schools, and society at large, safe from gun violence. They don’t want to see guns abolished, just high-magazines, semi-automatics and any device that can turn a gun into an automatic that gives a single individual the power to kill multitudes.
The nation may well decide to abolish guns, if the NRA continues to attack these students and anyone who questions the status quo of guns. Former U.S. Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens recently called for repeal of the 2ndAmendment, moved, as he said, by the 800 gun-control reform marches nationwide that March for Our Lives organized.
Stevens’ reasoning is similar to that used by late Justice Anton Scalia in District of Columbia v. Heller, which ruled individuals have a right to own a gun for protection. ”Whatever the reason, handguns are the most popular weapon chosen by Americans for self-defense in the home, and a complete prohibition of their use is invalid,” Scalia wrote.
The NRA, worried over how the court would rule in that 2008 decision, happily ran with this precedent to oppose handgun bans in beleaguered cities wherever they were proposed. Yet, Scalia’s argument, like Stevens’, is based more on popular opinion rather than intrinsic law.
Now, after the slaughter of 17 students at Parkland’s Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School by a young man wielding a semi-automatic weapon, popular opinion is for strict gun controls that include a ban on such weapons.
The NRA’s old 2ndAmendment arguments are falling on deaf ears, even among some – perhaps many – gun owners. By ensuring the nation is flooded with guns, the NRA proved wrong their argument that more guns mean more safety.
The Parkland students just want to reduce gun violence for a safer, “more perfect Union,” as the Constitution states. They have shown the American public that your voice – not your gun – is the sacred instrument of democracy.
