“DO SOMETHING!” That’s what we hear
people scream after every shooting. They want the government to do something
about the guns. And our politicians react by proposing yet more laws to
infringe on “the right of the people to keep and bear arms.”
It doesn’t matter that the strictest
gun laws in the country do not prevent the carnage in Chicago and Baltimore
every week. It doesn’t matter that background checks already on the books would
not have prevented the El Paso and Dayton shooters from acquiring their guns. What
matters is the Second Amendment itself. It has to go.
There is no possible way that
politicians can abolish the Second Amendment from our Bill of Rights. So, the
next best thing is to chop it up into little pieces. Enter the latest proposal:
“red flag” laws. Some 15 states already have them. Now, politicians like
Senator Lindsey Graham think it’s time for red-flag laws to go national.
Except that there are a few problems
with such laws, beyond the fact that data accumulated since 2010 reveals that
they have had no significant effect on violent crime in the states that have
them. The problem may very well be with the administration of such laws. Who
decides that an individual is a threat? By what standards? By what evidence?
The real danger is that red-flag
laws can become a slippery slope. Certifiable nuts should not have a gun. What
about white supremacists? Or Trump supporters? Or climate deniers? Or religious zealots? They’re all dangerous
people, aren’t they? As presidential contender Corey Booker has said, “Red-flag
laws…they’re nowhere near enough to stop these rising levels of mass
shootings.”
The only solution is to get rid of
the Second Amendment. If we can’t abolish it outright, then we can do it piece
by piece until all the guns have been confiscated from everybody. To hell with
the Constitution.
No comments:
Post a Comment