For more than ten years I was an NRA member until the day I decided that Wayne LaPierre’s comment referring to the government as jack booted thugs was a little much. This type of statement is always made to inflame the members and drive membership. I do believe that this type of marketing based on passion not logic, has no place when guns are concerned. That leads me to the NRA strategy of always falling back on the second amendment with the idea that the government wants to take your gun away. When you examine the second amendment the NRA is way off base. The amendment says we have the right to bear arms. Whether you believe you have this right because you need protected from your government or from your neighbor or the boggy man you are way off the mark.
First if you believe, as strict constitutionalists do, and the NRA members do, it is always your right to bear arms you must first understand that when the constitution was written a musket was the arm you would be bearing not the guns available today. If you do think that the idea of the second amendment was to be ever evolving then any weapon made today should be you right to own and use. In today’s world that would include machine guns, surface to air missiles, rockets, rocket propelled grenades, land mines, torpedoes, gun silencers, laser weapons, and whatever else has been developed by our military. I know first hand from a military gun collector friend that the federal law for ownership of machine guns is tightly regulated. Try getting a permit to have a gun silencer and see how that works for you! Try buying a land mine, a surface to air missile, a rocket propelled grenade, a rocket just to name a few weapons that are available to the military today. Better yet, why don’t you carry a hand grenade with you around the neighborhood just to help fight the bad guys off you might encounter in your day to day life. So the real issue is not the right to bear arms but what kind of arms can you bear. That’s already been established by the courts.
Obviously over the years our military has developed unbelievable arms. The issue is what arms are logical for the general public to own or to protect the home and family. We already have an extensive list of arms legislated for use by military only. There is no reasonable need of these arms to be used by civilians. If you are one of these citizens who believes that by owning arms, you will be able to overthrow the government when and if it goes bad, then you are really dreaming. We don’t even know what they have; let alone what they could use. We didn’t know about the stealth bomber until it was fifteen years old. Hell they probably have satellite mounted computer guided lasers to control you! So what should we do?
We do not need rhetoric driven by the NRA which is owned by the gun makers and has bought the congress as well. We need all sides to sit down and formulate legislation that will lower murders while still protecting all of us. I am tired of the crackpots ruling the debate by bitchin the loudest, threatening the most often, and in general acting like a ten year old brat. We will never stop all the killings but we do need to lower the numbers. It is our responsibility.