Phil Boas, Arizona Republic
Fri, June 3, 2022,
The American left is in high dudgeon, unshackling itself from the rules of polite society and blaming the deaths of dozens, if not hundreds, of gun-homicide victims on the American right.
“You. It’s your fault,” Washington Post columnist Christine Emba wrote. “You, the gun-obsessed minority who lord over our politics and prevent change from being made. You, who mumble ‘thoughts and prayers’ but balk at action.”
“Nineteen children are dead,” U.S. Rep. Eric Swalwell, D-Calif., said. “And so to my Republican colleagues I ask, ‘Who are you here for? Are you here for the kids or are you here for the killers?’ ”
Joe Scarborough, the former Reagan Republican turned unctuous morning host of cable-left news, tweeted an image of Texas Democrat Beto O’Rourke shouting at Republican officeholders:
“There are several here who fit the definition of ‘Sick Son of a Bitch’ in this picture, but none go by the name of Beto. Look instead at the freaks who keep gutting gun laws so 18-year-olds can buy weapons designed for war to go into schools and slaughter babies. THAT is sick.”
Dems are fed up with playing GOP gun politics
Liberals and their Democratic cohorts are so angry and so done with gun violence and Republicans who play politics with the lives of children that they’re breaking out the F-word and unleashing their fury on Twitter. (As if going berserk with F-bombs represents a breakthrough on Twitter.)
Arizona U.S. Rep. Ruben Gallego fit this pattern. He didn’t wait for the Texas school dead to be identified before he accused one of that state’s U.S. senators, Ted Cruz, of murder:
“Just to be clear f*** you @tedcruz you f***ing baby killer.”
Confronted with this rolling tide of recriminations, one Republican finally got fed up and pushed back.
“To infer by rhetorical supposed questions, who are you here for, we must be here for the gunman, is an outrage,” Rep. Louie Gohmert, R-Texas, said. “How dare you. You think we don’t have hearts?”
He was wasting his breath.
The way to stop self-righteous, finger-wagging Democrats who say you have blood on your hands is not to complain.
It’s to unmask them.
The 'core problem is the 2nd Amendment'
Democrats all know why America among advanced nations is uniquely plagued by rampage shootings. In a column in The New Republic, Walter Shapiro, journalist and former White House speechwriter for Jimmy Carter, spelled it out:
“The hard truth is that the core problem is the Second Amendment itself. And America is going to reel from one mass murder to another unless the Second Amendment is repealed or the Supreme Court drastically reduces its scope.”
Repealing the Second Amendment is hard.
It would require first supermajorities in both the House and the Senate. Then you would need three-fourths of the states to ratify that decision.
That will only happen if the party that demands greater gun control gets the ball rolling. But Democrats from Hillary Clinton to Barack Obama to Dianne Feinstein to Joe Biden have long claimed they support the Second Amendment.
Here’s Biden on Thursday night:
“And, by the way – it’s going to sound bizarre – I support the Second Amendment. You have a right. But from the very beginning, the Second Amendment didn’t say you can own any gun you want, big as you want.”
Democrats keep nibbling at the edges
Biden calls for 'common sense' gun reform amid a series of deadly mass shootings
Instead of launching a movement to repeal the Second Amendment, Biden served up policy leftovers from all the other mass shootings – ban assault weapons, ban high-capacity magazines, pass red-flag laws.
“For God’s sake,” said Biden. “How much more carnage are we willing to accept?”
Quite a bit if we’re relying on those.
Yes, they may be well meaning and represent at least some action. But Democratic and Republican leaders all know these will not put a significant dent in gun violence in America.
For that, the party of gun control will need to go bold.
Shapiro, their fellow Democrat, sounds like he’s on to them:
“Democrats should drop the mealy-mouthed formulation, ‘Nobody supports the Second Amendment more than I do,’ but still … . Claiming fidelity to the Second Amendment has never convinced a single NRA supporter of a candidate’s sincerity, but it has stopped bold thinking about lasting solutions to America’s gun crisis.”
So why aren’t Democrats willing to get the ball rolling on Second Amendment repeal?
Why won’t they be campaigning on the issue in this year’s midterms and the presidential election of 2024?
Just read the polls.
If this about the kids, stop nibbling at the edges
When the Economist and YouGov asked Americans in 2018 if they supported Second Amendment repeal, only 21% did. Sixty percent opposed it. Among cohorts, Democrats were the most likely to support repeal at 39%.
Bret Stephens, a conservative New York Times columnist who would actually join the Democrats’ crusade if they would only kick it off, observed:
“Maybe it’s because they argue their case badly and – let’s face it – in bad faith. Democratic politicians routinely profess their fidelity to the Second Amendment – or rather, “a nuanced reading” of it – with all the conviction of Barack Obama’s support for traditional marriage, circa 2008. People recognize lip service for what it is.”
So we all know the score, Democrats refuse to pursue the one policy strategy they know would finally stop to any degree this raging epidemic of mass shootings in America, because to do so, they know they would lose elections.
If you, like many of them, lacked all self-awareness and common decency, you might even put it to the Democrats this way:
“Are you here for the kids or are you here for the killers?”
Phil Boas is an editorial columnist for The Arizona Republic. Email him at phil.boas@arizonarepublic.com.
This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Repeal the Second Amendment, Democrats, if you're serious
Gary Cosby Jr., The Tuscaloosa News
Sat, June 4, 2022
Gary Cosby Jr.
“A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”
So reads the amendment that has throughout our nation’s history guaranteed the right of American citizens to keep and bear arms. In today’s America, we have a tendency to honor the second part of the amendment while disregarding the qualifying statement that gives the amendment its context.
Only a few days have passed since another horrible school shooting, this one in Texas. More children are dead because someone exercised his right to keep and bear arms, but refused his responsibility. But does the responsibility for this act not go deeper than the act of a single individual? Does not the Second Amendment give Congress the authority to regulate firearms within a specific framework? When it is our children who are paying the butcher’s bill, one must call into question the wisdom of continually supporting unfettered access to firearms.
Clearly, violent acts committed with firearms have become an extraordinary problem in America. Exhibit A: Since the horror of school shootings burst upon the national consciousness in 1999 with the Columbine High School killings, there have been 169 killed in school shooting events wherein at least four persons have died, excluding the shooter. More have been killed in school shootings, but in those shootings, less than four died.
More: Investigation: ATF rarely issues harsh gun dealer penalties in Alabama
More: My rights or my responsibilities? | GARY COSBY JR.
So how many children in school have to be murdered before we, as a nation, take action to curtail this mess? How many shoppers in supermarkets, or worshippers in churches, synagogues or mosques have to lay dying before we as a nation say 'Enough is enough?'
Will innocent people ever be able to shed enough blood for those who advocate unrestricted gun rights to take a second look at the results of their stance?
The problem is not that we definitely need regulation on the ownership and use of firearms, the question is what can actually be done in a nation where there are far more guns in circulation than there are people to fire them? And one cannot gloss over the point that the overwhelming majority of gun owners are not out there murdering people. How then, do you place restrictions upon gun ownership in a method that does not infringe upon the rights of those who abide by the law?
The most obvious answer is that the Second Amendment does not provide the completely unrestricted right to keep and bear arms. There is the mostly ignored phrase that begins the amendment, “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State …"
There was no way in heaven or hell that the framers of the Constitution could foresee a culture such as we live in now. There is no way they could conceive of a time or place wherein a person would walk into a school and slaughter children.
In the late 1700s, folks used muskets that fired a single ball, which had to be manually recharged with powder, wadding and shot before the gun could be fired again. It would have been impossible for a single person with a gun to do much damage before he would have been swarmed by a mob and taken down.
They could not in any way envision a day where a person could walk into a public venue — school, church or place of business — and randomly open fire with a high-capacity firearm that shoots as rapidly as one can pull the trigger. Moreover, in their worst nightmares, they could not have foreseen a culture wherein there would be people capable of walking into a school and murdering children.
Nevertheless, they framed the amendment in such a way that it is obvious that they felt the ownership of firearms was to be a part of a well-regulated militia. In their day, the United States had no standing military. The volunteers who made up George Washington’s army were farmers and shop-keepers and everyday people who were expected to come to the defense of their nation should the need arise.
They had to have firearms to do that. Had the framers of the Constitution ever considered that the Second Amendment would be used to enable mass murderers, they would have never written it in such an open-ended manner. No rational person would have done so. No one of those men could have imagined a day when a gun rights lobby would buy off congressmen and congresswomen who, for fear of losing an office, would do everything possible to gloss over the violence, taking what amounts to blood money to maintain the status quo.
There is a literal mandate within the Second Amendment itself that gun ownership would be a protected right within the scope of a well-regulated militia. There is no guarantee of gun ownership apart from such a condition. Congress has both a moral and a constitutional mandate to come up with reasonable laws and regulations to put the brakes on the accelerating violence because turning a blind eye to the situation is clearly costing lives.
Gary Cosby Jr. is photo editor of The Tuscaloosa News. Readers can email him at gary.cosby@tuscaloosanews.com.
This article originally appeared on The Tuscaloosa News: Is gun control written in the Second Amendment? | GARY COSBY JR.
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