We Aren’t Ducks or Deer. Don’t Shoot.

At the time this post was published 18 students and 9 faculty members at an elementary school in Sandy Hook, Connecticut, were killed execution-style by a lone gunman. This is the 4,000,000,000th mass shooting in the last 20 years, and I’d had enough. I blogged my frustration.

I just don’t understand America. Or at least, I don’t think I understand what America has become in the 21st century when psychotic mass murderers are allowed to roam the street with machine guns and semi-automatic weapons, killing young children in schools and killing the teachers who tried to protect them. I really don’t think that’s the kind of America that I want to live in.

We live in a country governed by a Constitution, of course, and in that document lies the Second Amendment. That Amendment reads:

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.

Essentially, it gives the people the right to a “regulated” militia that shall not be denied the right to carry guns. A militia! Not individual people who want to go kill some kids on a Friday. Not to deranged psychopaths who want to kill Batman fans in a move theater. Not to two high school boys in trench coats who want to kill all the poeple who never liked them enough to make them the cool kids.

For the past half-century, America has been beholden to the National Rifle Association, a group of gun owners and “enthusiasts” (um, okay) that seeks to make sure that the Second Amendment is never modified, outlawed, or dissed in any way. To date, their actions have funded hundreds of Republican candidates, created a group of people convinced that the American government wants to “steal their guns” and “do tyranny,” and they’ve caused a ban on assault weapons to expire. That expiration means that people can now go kill anyone they like with a machine gun that shouldn’t leave the battlefield. Ever.

And that’s exactly what people have done. Over and over, Americans are slaughtered by the tens as they go to school, go to work, head to the movies, finish their holiday shopping, walk down the sidewalk, or check their email. All because America’s 300 million residents believe that they are somehow considered a “militia” by a 300-year-old document that was written when this country was fighting for its very existence.

Guns are for deer and ducks. Wildlife gets shot. Humans do not get shot. Humans don’t live their lives fearing the slaughter. Americans certainly don’t. Or didn’t. Or shouldn’t.

It’s time to talk gun control. It’s time to talk Assault Weapons Ban #2. It’s time to talk gun-buying restrictions. Go ahead and try to mass murder people with knives. Try it. See how that works. Sure, bad people will always kill. But a lack of guns will certainly slow the death toll.

It’s time to bid adieu to guns in America, for our people are too irresponsible and immature to use them properly.


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