The Second Amendment

I guess I will start this blog with an issue that I find one of the most important aspects of modern US politics, gun control.

Yep I am totally against any form of gun control in the United States period. Military, automatic, belt fed, bayonet you name it I personally feel any form of firearm should be available for any citizen of the United States to own legally as long as they have not been convicted of a violent felony.

I am sure if you are an anti-gun proponent I will never change your mind and I am also sure if you are one of the "hunting rifle" only sort of gun supporters you will never see the need for anyone to own a firearm that looks military in anyway. Perhaps someday you will get your wish and legislation will be passed limiting a citizen’s access to "certain types" of firearms for starters. When and if that happens I can only smile and imagine the can of worms you will be opening, not only with the protestors but with the other rights that will be "re-evaluated" after the second is butchered. Freedom of speech but only if no one complains (ok wait we already have that one), lets see ok I got it, when you have the troops taking over your home for a few nights with their government issue assault rifles cause after the second amendment the government went after the third etc. etc.

Its no secret old world governments limited ownership of weapons. They also allowed them as with "The English Bill of Rights of 1689" Which granted all protestants the right to arms for self defense. Many believe this was the fore runner of the American Bill of Rights but whatever the case maybe the granting of rights and the taking away of rights to arms and weapons has been done for centuries.

What is curious is that the more totalitarian or unpopular a government is the more they wish to restrict weapon ownership even unto the time of the revolution when British troops attempted to disarm local militias and were met with resistance which also prompted writers like Blackstone to insist on the right to own arms and even John Adams to refer to that right when he defended the British soldiers after the Boston Massacre. Our founding fathers wanted every able bodied male to own a firearm suitable for self and community defense.

So before I go any further into a history lesson of colonial America the point is that even at that time there were hunting weapons and those suitable for military use yet no distinction was made on which could be privately owned and which could not.

For the past 150 years we in the United States have been lucky enough to not need to have every home contain a weapon suitable for military use but that can change very quickly and unexpectedly. The United States has not needed to call on a general levy of all able bodied men from an any given area for generations, but if we should ever need to I would feel much better if those who turned out did so with somewhat modern firearms.

I also find it entertaining that the U.S. Homeland security can post guidelines for keeping food and other items for emergencies and not list firearms or at least not that I could find a reference to. I live in a rural area and myself and my neighbors have had run ins with feral dogs on several occasions over the years attacking livestock, pets, and even entering houses. I can tell you assault type weapons are the firearms of choice in those circumstances, take my word for it. Do you think feral dogs wont be an issue in a sustained type of emergency situation? In a lot of major cities they are already very dangerous just do a search on feral dogs and read for yourself. Also in rural areas you have feral pigs and other colony type animals which may need firearms to control. Military type arms are usually the best type for work of this nature.

Military weapons are never going to go away. They will always be available either legally or illegally those who use them to commit violent crimes don’t care how they get them but making it impossible for law abiding citizens to own or purchase them will only come back to bite us in the ass somewhere down the line. The danger of not having them available when the need arises far outweighs the danger of a few crazy people, who usually had them illegally to begin with.