Why is it easier for a teenager to get a semi-automatic weapon and enough bullets to level a school full of children than it is to get a case of beer or a joint?
For the record, it needs to be said that the majority of weapons kids who smoke pot fire are contained in the Xbox they’re vegging out in front of. And new studies show it’s great for hand eye coordination!
Never has a political force been more out of touch than the NRA. Armed-guards in every school are a killer solution to the current pandemic of public shootings. How long will that go on till a disgruntled, underpaid guard unleashes his wrath on whoever’s closest? What will the NRA offer as a solution then? That armed guards are needed for each armed guard in every school? How about arming the teachers in case the armed guards for the armed guards go postal? And the kids themselves might as well be armed in case the teachers loose their goo, right?
It’s like an Escher drawing of bad logic.
I believe we should use this thinking across the board for all our problems. It’s the Tipping Point mentality. Take whatever problem lies at the core of the issue, and multiply it till it magically neutralizes itself.
Corruption in government? Pay the politicians more, and they won’t need to steal! Kids addicted to adderall? Manufacture new drugs to balance out the bad effects! Insurrections in third world countries? Arm them with more weapons to use against us when we intervene. It’s worked well so far!
It’s maddening. And I have since heard more than one person fantasize about infiltrating the NRA, rising in the ranks over a period of five years, and then open firing on the leadership at one of their big public gatherings in a standard, but all too necessary you-reap-what-you-sew lesson for the ages.
It’s also comical in the unfunniest way how political these fanatics get. Lucky for them the right to bear arms is only the 2nd amendment. They only have to know two, before they stop listening completely. How many of them can name the 3rd amendment would you guess? And why is it that they are so intolerant of the 1st?
The second amendment was written a few centuries ago, when the threat of an angry superpower was looming. Were the British going to come back? What about the French and Spanish? The right to bear arms had an actual context back then. And that’s when bearing arms meant tapping gunpowder into a riffle, and a cotton ball, and then stuffing a ball into it, followed by a ramrod to pad it all down before firing once and reloading. Let’s be true fundamentalists here, for a moment. True Americans. Everyone in this country has the right to bear muskets which take 3-5 minutes to load. I’ll back that amendment any day of the week.
But if the weapon evolves, then so must the law. That’s called logic. And logic will triumph. Logic is viral. Logic seeps into the debate whether Wayne LaPierre likes it or not, and it’s ever so interesting to watch how the NRA rationale is trending. More and more people, conservative republicans, we might say, are seeing them as out of touch. Yes they are a powerful lobby. But so are angry and grieving mothers– never a wise demographic to provoke with intolerance. Mad Mothers, as we have already seen, can garner more firepower politically than AR-15 assault rifles.
It will be interesting to watch this play out. Our rights are inalienable, yes. They are also a privilege not to be taken for granted or abused. When they are, they are amended. It’s happened 27 times before in this great nation. And it’s about to happen again.
