The Debate Is Only About Control--Not Guns

Gun control isn't about guns, it's about control. The intention of the Second Amendment is to prevent control. Last Wednesday's post about gun rights being inalienable whether or not they are written, was about what we are born with rather than what we are given. What we are given is called 'positive rights'. What we are born with are called natural rights. What laws are supposed to prevent being taken from us are called 'negative rights', and natural rights are 'negative rights'.

President Obama and others said we must "protect the children", sometimes adding "at all costs" or "at whatever cost". But others in the past have said that we cannot protect one person's rights at the expense of another.

On Saturday at one of the many pro gun-right rallies held across the nation, former Marine Damon Locke said to applause at a Florida rally he had helped organize, "We are law-abiding citizens, business owners, military, and we are not going to be responsible for other people's criminal actions."

What lesson does it send to children and to young adults to learn their political leaders have a desire to protect them by diminishing the right of law-abiding citizens? What lesson does it send to demonstrate that when a problem arises, the only means their leaders can think of is to destroy the Constitution?

What lesson, when they are old enough to stop to think that the utilitarian and pragmatic ideas coming out of Washington have gone from the fallacy of the greatest good for the greatest number, to using children as pawns in the fight to control the weapons without which we could not protect our First Amendment?

The right to bear arms does not say which kind of arms. Certainly we do not want live cannons and mortars in our neighbors' back yards, so we ban those things. That isn't about control, it is about immediate safety; in other words, if a cannon shot a round from suburbs of Detroit, where would the round hit, and does anyone have a right to fire a cannon anywhere except on a training field? What if it was not properly maintained and it blew up? We wouldn't let people have tiny nuclear reactors, if they existed, in their homes for their electrical needs, because when those devices have accidents, they are often irreparable.

"The Second Amendment was not written to protect your right to shoot deer. It was written to protect your right to shoot tyrants if they take over the government," said Judge Andrew Napolitano. 

© Curtis Edward Clark 2012