Gun control (or lack thereof)

While gun control isn’t the hot topic it used to be, it is still an important subject and sure to become more relevant with the new Democratic Congress. I thought I’d post my views on the subject after reading this editorial I found on Digg. I’ll post the second amendment here for your reference.

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.

In short I believe that there should be no gun control whatsoever. You might be asking yourself why I would feel this way. Anyone who knows me knows that I hold many liberal viewpoints, but let me say that I do not think that gun control is very liberal. In fact I believe that the right to bear arms is one of our most precious freedoms, equal to the freedom of speech.

What makes the right to bear arms so important? You have to consider the context. Our nation was newly formed and fresh off a bloody struggle for our independence from an oppressive centralized government. We were little more than an over sized banana republic, with little wealth and almost no defense. In order to make certain that we could maintain our new found liberty, a well armed populous was deemed a necessity. Not only would the arms protect us from outside invaders, it would also protect us from insurrection. Additionally, there was a great fear of the centralized government at the time, and a well armed people could protect themselves from that as well. I recommend you read the Wikipedia article on the second amendment to find out more.

I think where people go wrong is that they do not understand the purpose of the second amendment. The second amendment does not protect your right to bear arms so that you can hunt or protect your family from burglars. It protects your right to bear arms so that you can we can protect ourselves from invasion, insurrection, or an oppressive government takeover.

The beauty of this country is that the power resides with the people and there are two things that insure this power remains with the people. Number one is the most obvious, it is the vote. Voting is the ideal and best way to get things done. Number two is your right bear arms. If for some reason someone tries to remove our right to vote, then we can always use the power of our arms to get the power of the vote back. However, if we let people convince us to vote away our right to arms, then we have effectively lost both of our assurances and have no power at all.

For these reasons I believe that the right to bear arms should not be infringed… at all. Any politician who tells you that gun control is a good thing is only trying to get the soccer mom, hippie, pinko, commie, liberal vote. In my opinion gun control is a slap in the face to American ideals and liberty, and borders on treason.