This cartoon is one of my thoughts about the effect of our second amendment, as interpreted by the Supreme Court. They have held that it isn't just a right for ensuring state militia power against the federal government, but provides an individual right to gun ownership. Our legislators are so cowed by NRA lobbyists that they have failed to legislate meaningful limits on gun ownership. And so the combination of the 2nd amendment right and the lack of other countervailing restrictions has made our other rights the target of abuse. The very life of citizens is at issue, as so terribly demonstrated by the murder of 20 innocent 6 and 7 year old school children at Sandy Hook. Who can exercise liberty rights when it isn't safe to even attend school or go to a mall or otherwise live in America. What pursuit of happiness exists, other than the happiness of a warm gun? For those of us who do not enjoy gun ownership, we are left without the same freedoms.
The very suggestion that everyone needs to own a gun, that schools should have armed guards, that more guns are the solution to the unacceptable gun violence is total insanity. This opinion by Fareed Zakaria does a good job of explaining.
20 little children killed in one morning, along with the 6 adults at the school, the very disturbed young man who was the shooter and his mother--so many senseless deaths. We can only have them make sense if we now use this to fuel real debate and change.
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