Gun Control

An article on Townhall addressed the Stand Your Ground laws. “An individual’s right to possess a firearm to defend one’s self is guaranteed unequivocally in the Second Amendment to our Constitution.” Actually, it only says that if you remove several words.

The Second Amendment starts with, “A well regulated militia…” I don’t think the framers were referring to a couple of guys in a pickup truck. Nowhere in the Constitution does it say anything about being able to use deadly force. The law, for many years, was you first had a duty to retreat but if no retreat was available, then you could stand your ground. Why is this so challenging? Isn’t it best to first avoid confrontation and only accept it when there is no other alternative?

The article continues:

Moreover, Stand Your Ground laws remove the confusion over when, and how, citizens may legally defend themselves in situations of peril. It takes much of the “legal guesswork” out of situations where every second counts, and second guessing could lead to extreme bodily harm, or even death.

I read that as, shoot first and ask questions later. What the author is really saying here is that by taking the so called “legal guesswork” out of it, we make it easier for someone to simply shoot and kill another person who confronts them and that is something to be desired.

I don’t think so! If I’m walking down the street after having an argument with my girlfriend, I might look really angry. Say I make eye contact with someone and I’m walking directly toward them. They see the anger in my face and are now fearful that I am about to cause them great bodily harm. They shoot me. This scenario may be an exaggeration but it’s not totally out of the realm of possibility. I simply cannot fathom someone who thinks that this should be acceptable in our society. I don’t know about other people, but I was always raised to use my words first, to defend myself with my mind and my intelligence, not with my fist or, as many on the right would have it, a gun.

The author goes on:

Obama, Holder, and other critics of Stand Your Ground laws are, in effect, adopting the notion that it is not the responsibility of the individual to defend himself or herself against attack, but rather the government’s duty to do so for them. In this worldview, the individual is supposed meekly to “back away” from a confrontation and let the State, through police intervention – one supposes – take over. This is the European cultural view – a philosophy very much at odds with that on which our nation was founded, and which served us well until recently, when the gun-control crowd began its push for cultural recognition.

I’m sorry, “at odd with that on which our nation was founded”? Seriously? We want to be able to kill each other? That’s not the reality in which I live. The reality in which I live resulted in 8775 firearm homicides in the United States in 2010. The United Kingdom had 58. Yes, their population is one fifth that of ours so that equates to 290 US. Still, quite a bit less than the almost 9000 we actually had. It seems like this European cultural view sounds like a pretty great place and maybe something we might actually want to embrace. Of course, maybe that’s just us gun control, leftist, Constitutional rights shredding people that see it that way.

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Bryan is the founder of 2 Rights Make a Left. While obtaining his J.D., Bryan researched and wrote extensively on Capital Punishment, an issue that remains close to his heart to this day. He has spent the majority of his adult life involved in politics in some form or another. Bryan spends most of his time reading, writing and discussing all things politics. Bryan loves to travel and, if he had his way, would constantly be jetting off to another destination. The rest of his time is spent following his beloved Bears, Bulls and Cubbies.

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