Saturday, April 14, 2012

The Wild, Crazy West

We here in the U.S. of A. (not necessarily standing for a$$holes) sure do love our Second Amendment. More than any other amendment we tend to view it absolutely. Any idiot should be able to get any type of gun and carry it into to a bar in Arizona. It's pretty well known that we've had a long romance with guns. We glamorize them in our pop culture and then the local news covers the daily destruction of gun violence without a hint of irony. Our politicians fail to do anything about it because the NRA is a very powerful lobby. And so we've grown numb to all the random gun violence that fills up the local news.

A sane country would think that now would be a good time to reform our gun laws instead of kicking granny off social security or getting involved in reproductive decisions, but the influence of money has no healthy relationship with sanity. The senseless killing of Trayvon has brought into focus the Stand Your Ground laws that pretty much okay shooting anyone who threatens you (in public!) Be careful about insulting someone in a Walmart parking lot. Walmart, through its involvement in the now notorious ALEC, helped push Stand Your Ground on the public without much controversy. Nothing moves guns out the door like lax gun laws and a constant dose of fear, fear, fear as a result of all the gun violence on a local and national level.

The gun lobby would like you believe that if everyone had a gun then we'd live in perfect harmony (because their logic has it that everyone would be too afraid to pull the trigger). If that logic appears to collide with reality, then the fallback argument is The Second Amendment is a God given right (because nothing gets the religious up in arms like inserting God into the discussion). In reality, The Second Amendment allows for a "well regulated militia being necessary for the security of a free state." The intention of the law is stated clearly. Guns must be well regulated for the security of a free state.