By Ted Lang
web
posted May 20, 2002
Many are confused as to the recent events involving the Bush administration's pronouncement of a change in the federal government's interpretation of the Second Amendment as being an individual "right" as opposed to a "collective right" available to only a government controlled group of soldiers. There is absolutely nothing at all new here; this is merely a simple, straightforward interpretation anyone politically unbiased, reasonably educated and adept in the English language would make.
Left-liberals and their media, the socialist-oriented activists with a utopian agenda for us all, desperately need the total abolition of private ownership of firearms. All means and methods of obfuscation, convoluted "reasoning" and outright criminal fraud, are being employed to disarm the American people.
Left-wing extremists have always offered that the Second Amendment applies only to military reservists, most formally identified as the National Guard. The Constitution and its first ten amendments, the Bill of Rights, was ratified by the joint and several states in 1791; the National Guard was created in 1903, so that argument fails. And trial by jury, the right not to self incriminate, or protection from cruel and unusual punishment does not apply "collectively;" why would all of the Bill of Rights afford individual protection except the Second Amendment? Only to serve the false arguments of left-wingers.
When the collectivist argument fails, gun abolitionists then point to the Second Amendment as causing monumental crimes of violence and resultant homicides, robberies and shootings. Yet, the actual experience now being documented in England and Australia, after the implementation of a 100 per cent total ban on private firearms ownership, shows that just the opposite is true. These countries, especially England, are experiencing such a staggering increase in gun violence and crime the likes of which are totally foreign to its culture. England came into being via the battleaxe, the spear, the sword and the long bow. There never has been a "gun culture" there - even police never carried sidearms. But now, with the increasing gun crimes and violence, legislative consideration evidences the intent to arm police rather than simply rescind bad, dangerous and life-threatening legislation, euphemistically termed as "gun control."
In other words, England's legislators would rather rely upon arming after-the-fact police, who usually arrive after a robbery, homicide or rape has been committed, for purposes of completing reports to initiate an investigation to track down the perpetrator[s] rather than take measures to protect and prevent such crimes from happening to innocent, law-abiding citizens in the first place.
If the collective argument is untenable, as well as the "proliferation" theory citing private ownership of firearms as the chief causative factor in crime, then issues of "gun safety" must be raised to address the high rate of "gun accidents" in a free nation where the government is precluded from interfering with a citizen's right to purchase, keep and carry firearms as established by its Constitution. Yet, according to unbiased statistical information from both the National Safety Council as well as from the Uniform Crime Reports of the FBI, with gun ownership in the United States at its highest on record, accidents are astonishingly low as well as totally insignificant. The Million Moms exaggeration of 12 children a day lost to guns includes youths up to and including 17 years of age who die in ghetto inner-city drug gang shootings. The amount of small preteen children who die from all gun accidents number roughly 60 per year.
That is not to say that the death of 60 small children is an insignificant occurrence, but when more than that low number die by drowning in 5-gallon pails, and many more die from choking on food, then the number of gun accidents is astonishingly small and therefore insignificant.
The gun hysteria results from the usurpation by the media of tragic figures who offer their own horrible experiences of gun violence to advance the former's gun-free vision of utopia. Supported also by behind-the-scenes multi-millionaire/billionaire activists such as Edwin McKelvey, who enjoy using their wealth to force society to jump through their personal hoops, we have the complete activist mantra of gun hysteria.
Combining gun hysteria with the media's penchant for making or breaking
politicians, especially those of a Republican persuasion, the question
is why would the Bush administration, given its recent record of catering
to the liberal causes of the Democrat Party, now risk high ratings to
advance the individual right theory in opposition to the collective one?
How's the argument coming along as regards the majority desire to arm
airline pilots? 
(c) Theodore E. Lang. All rights reserved.
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