So far this year, there have been 27 school shootings with injuries or deaths.
A few weeks ago, on May 24, 2022, an 18-year-old Salvadoran man fatally shot nineteen students and two teachers and wounded seventeen other people, at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas. Earlier that day, in her own home, he had shot his grandmother in the forehead severely wounding her. And this comes just 10 days after a shooting at a Tops supermarket in Buffalo, N.Y., that took the lives of 10 people.
In 2021 there were 693 mass shootings, in the United States. In 2020 the were 611 mass shootings, and in 2019 there were 417 mass shootings.
There is a huge segment of the American Society that cries that the second amendment grants them the right to “bare arms.” It is true, that the Second Amendment does grant citizens the right to bear arms. This amendment was ratified on December 15, 1791. That was 231 years ago. What was happening in this country 231 years ago? Is there a real justification for this amendment, as written, in today’s modern world?
The Second Amendment was based partially on the right to keep and bear arms in English common law and was influenced by the English Bill of Rights of 1689. Sir William Blackstone described this right as an auxiliary right, supporting the natural rights of self-defense and resistance to oppression, and the civic duty to act in concert in defense of the state. (1)
In my humble opinion, laws are fluid and are not written in stone. The Constitution likewise is fluid and changes as societies need change. For example, for hundreds of years, slavery was legal in this country. Today, can any reasonably intelligent person really justify owning another human being? A civil war was fought because of the two opposing schools of thought. On the one hand, a segment of the population viewed blacks as less than human. They actually saw them as cattle. On the other hand, a segment of the American population disagreed with that notion and recognized black people as human beings deserving the same protections afforded whites. Hence the 13th Amendment.
This is one example of Laws (the Constitution) being changed because the needs or the intellectual quotient of society as a whole changing.
Because America has a representative government, laws can be changed. Citizens have the power to change the direction the nation is heading in simply by exercising their vote. At times one group will not like the changes that society demands and they rise up in revolt. For example, on January 6, 2021, a mob of 2,000–2,500 supporters of U.S. President Donald Trump attacked the Capitol Building in Washington, D.C. seeking to overturn his defeat in the 2020 presidential election by disrupting the joint session of Congress assembled to count electoral votes that would formalize the President-elect Joe Bidens victory.
SHAYS’ REBELLION
Shays’ Rebellion was a series of violent attacks on courthouses and other government properties in Massachusetts that began in 1786 and led to a full-blown military confrontation in 1787. This is the first time a group of citizens revolted. The rebels were mostly ex-Revolutionary War soldiers-turned farmers who opposed state economic policies causing poverty and property foreclosures. The rebellion was named after Daniel Shays, a farmer and former soldier who fought at Bunker Hill and was one of several leaders of the insurrection.
In modern America, there is no need for armed rebellion. Ours is a government of laws. However, those who demand and stand by the Second Amendment are the very same people that say they need to “bare arms” to keep the government from tyranny. Ironic because it is they who are the tyrants.
As a result of this faction joining together and establishing a strong, solid political base in America, they have developed a power base. This base, which is funded by GUN MANUFACTURERS, has a strong political voice via the GUN LOBBY. The gun lobby represents the gun manufacturers which purports to represent those adherents of the Second Amendment. The fact is that they do not care about the Second Amendment as those adherents do. They are motivated by one thing and one thing only, and that is MONEY.
As a result of this profit factor, weapons a bought, sold, stolen, and resold. There is a huge black market for guns and GUNS KILL PEOPLE. There was a bullshit concept that the gun lobby had fed the American public in the 1980s and the American public bought into it hook, line, and sinker. That concept was that guns don’t kill people, people kill people.
Let’s be real, open our eyes, use our god-given minds and realize that there is money in guns. Gun manufacturers are in the business of making money, so they will sell weapons to the American Military as well as sell weapons to our enemies. This is not conjecture or speculation, this is a fact. A certain member of my family, a retired military person, works for a large nongovernmental agency whose mission is to sell the old weapons in the American stockade to make room for the new and improved weapons currently being manufactured. Yes, they sell to both sides and have been since the founding of this country.
REASONABLE GUN POLICIES
The first horrendous school shooting to place on April 20, 1999, at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado. THAT WAS 23 YEARS AGO! Since that first incident, there have been hundreds of copycat killers on a yearly basis and often times multiple times per year. Yet nothing changes. The elected officials whose political careers get funded by the gun lobby would rather pander to that lobby than do the right thing. The right thing is to pass reasonable, and common-sense gun policies. As a result of this inaction innocent people, innocent children, innocent shoppers, innocent dancers, innocent movie goer’s, and innocent church goer’s are being killed. And everything one such act of wonton violence occurs the local elected officials stand before the American public to feign outrage. They stand with the grieving family, and the grieving community for that much sought-after “photo op” and then retreat to their corner to suck up to the NRA and the gun lobby.
GRASSROOTS MOBILIZATION
If we, logical thinking, life-loving, god-fearing American Citizens want something to be done about this violence, we have to mobilize at the grassroots level. That means at the local school boards, PTA’s, Churches, Sports leagues, bridge clubs, chess clubs, and sewing circles. Everywhere that we congregate. We have to be a force of political might. The gun lobby has money but we, the American public have the votes. If our elected officials do not care about our children, our friends, neighbors, and loved ones, why should be keep hiring them? Its time we kick them out. If you were an employee at any company and didn’t perform you’d get fired. Well, we are the politician’s bosses. We can and should fire them when they do not deliver the goods. People are dying. They are being gunned down. The only thing that happens is that every one of these mass murders, these misfits of society that gets caught, pleads to one form of diminished mental capacity or another. If these criminals never got or never sought help for mental illness prior to their heinous acts, why after they commit such barbaric acts do we see the need to coddle them. The courts should treat criminals as criminals. They should be sent to prison first then after they serve out their prison terms, then and only then should they receive help for their diminished mental health. If the crime merits capital punishment then they should receive capital punishment. If the court sentences these criminals to long prison terms they should serve out the prison terms before any consideration for mental help. Why must we do things backward? We send them to a mental hospital first. If they kill a group of people why do they get treated like patients? They are criminals. The wreckage of their acts destroys families and communities. Family members are left with the pain of loss, yet the perpetrators get to live.
If you want to do something about these heinous crimes, if you want to fire those politicians that pander to the BIG BUCKS while our children and our loved ones are gunned down and we are left to suffer, then let’s start the movement. Donate whatever you can, one penny, one dollar, one hundred dollars, and let’s create the movement to change these laws. Sensible, logical gun laws. No one needs an AK-15 Assault Rifle or other military-type weapons. And no hunter needs that much firepower. The argument is flawed, the logic is illogical. Let’s take back our government, let’s do it via the ballot, and not by storming the Nation’s Capitol.
Do your part, start organizing in your community, and start by donating one penny, one dollar, one hundred dollars.
Let’s TAKE BACK OUR GOVERNMENT.
D O N A T E H E R E (via venmo)
www.venmo.com/u/ourgovernment
Reference / Citation
1. “Blackstone’s Commentaries on the Laws of England – Book the First – Chapter the First: Of the Absolute Rights of Individuals, p. 139”. Yale. Archived from the original on July 6, 2011. Retrieved August 1, 2013.