Or a nug as Colonial Henry Blake once said in an episode of M*A*S*H. Major Frank Burns wanted Blake to order a 40mm anti-aircraft gun. The other doctors (Hawkeye and Trapper) didn’t want a nug or a gun in the camp because it would draw enemy fire, and since it was a hospital, yadda yadda. Anyone who’s a M*A*S*H fan (or uses common sense) would agree.
In Western movies (cowboys etc.) depicted by American producers and loosely based on what the “Old Western Days” were like, we were usually faced with the prospect of a gunfighter who has to face another, in the tradition of “I’m faster than you, Billy-the-Kid!” or sometimes it’s the town’s lawman “I’m quicker on the draw than you, Sheriff!”; followed by someone dying.
Key word here is “dying”.
This ‘Right to Bear Arms’ is one mighty powerful ideal so deeply rooted into the collective minds of almost all Americans; it is relative to the ‘Right to Breathe’. It is an unshakable, unmovable, and undeniable right, backed up by the massively organized and well-off National Rifle Association (NRA) and their respective Lobby groups.
Thinking I should know about more about all this, off I went to examine said Second Amendment and the powers-that-be who created such an iconic Right and lo and behold I discovered not just a simple line and an essential definition, but an immense library of where it came from, when it came from, why, what, and who it came from and so forth, and it goes on and on and on…
While I write this, Hadiya Pendleton, a fifteen old girl is shot and killed in Chicago in a park, while waiting for a rain shower to pass. At the same time, the NRA and anti-gun groups were doing battle at the Senate Judiciary Committee in Washington, D.C. in the wake of several mass shootings, most notably in Newtown, Connecticut.
The argument will always continue – the pros and the cons.
Along with gun ownership comes the ‘Right to Allow Yourself to be Shot’ which is summed up as the Right to Die. It isn’t really written into the Second Amendment, but it’s there never-the-less. Considering that “everyone” has the same Right, you’re agreeing to be shot. And around and around it goes.
Now you may think this is ridiculous but it’s not. If a person is willing to fire a weapon at another human being because the law says he can, then that person must accept the fact that the other person also has that right – even a mass murderer. A mass murderer can invariably defend himself during a gun fight with a teacher, principal, or a school guard for example. Maybe the gunman realizes that he has royally fucked up and wants to surrender, when along comes Principal Smith & Wesson shootin’ up the whole place, the mass murderer is invariably going to defend himself. Theoretically speaking.
After all, the mass murderer did have the Right to Bear Arms.
The NRA in their infinite wisdom, believe that putting more guns out there will allow others to come to the rescue during one of the many mass shootings that take place anywhere in the good ol’ U.S. of A. each week. Yee Haw! The western days of old have returned with vengeance as more and more overly excited people sign up to the NRA as if it were salvation from all possible harm!
Who needs an AK47? The Military and the Police - that’s who. Not Mr., Mrs., or Ms. U.S. America.
Unless your prey is a goddamn velociraptor, you can’t hunt anything with an AK47! Shoot a deer with one of those and the only thing left will be an antler. Poor critters out there don’t stand a chance.
These high-powered, blow-your-brains-out-of-the-back-of-your-head rifles can kill fifty people in the same time I write this stupid sentence.
What will my American cousins do when one of those slightly off-balance “militia” style groups show up at their local government offices ‘Bearing their Arms’, and try to take it over because they think the Mayor is a tyrannical leader and must be stopped at any cost.
What will happen when a bunch of semi-deranged “citizens” launch an attack on the old Town Hall with their AK47’s, grenade launchers, and a couple of bazookas to defend their freedom. And stocked with enough ammo to give them a five day shootin’ spree. Let’s hope the police are just as well equipped!
You’ve seen what one clown can do with one automatic rifle, imagine ten? Imagine twenty?
Do I understand the Second Amendment legal hooey? Do I want to? No.
Do I have an answer for this never-ending gun battle between the Nays and Yays? (Bit of a pun there.) No.
The only part of the American Constitution that everybody on the planet knows is the Second Amendment – the Right to Bear Arms – the right to carry a gun. That’s it, that’s all.
Seems that no one understands that owning an AK47, a machine gun or a missile launcher was not what the American Forefathers were thinking of when they were writing the Constitution.
So go ahead and get a hand-gun to defend yourself in case of “bad guys and/or girls”, or grab your AK47 and support the standing army as they defend against invaders (like that’s going to happen), or blow the dust of your anti-aircraft gun and go up against a tyrannical leader (like that’s going to happen); and no, Obama isn’t one.
Just be prepared to duck.