Yet another incident now marks the legacy of the NRA, the Republican Party and their judicial appointments, including the Supreme Court, and the six members of the current court, who, just a few days before this happened, made a ruling which supported circumstances that permitted this to happen. There's no constitutional right that has been more misinterpreted, and more completely distorted out of anything close to its originalist intention than the right to bear arms. And it is long past time for us, the vast majority of the American people who want reasonable and constitutional gun control to find ways to get it.
The best way to do that is to start voting NRA-owned legislators out of office. So it's too difficult to convince people to elevate this issue to the same level of priority that some Republicans do for abortion? Take a look at the images from that shooting on a main street in a suburb, the kind of suburb where millions of Americans live. There was a two year old boy found wandering around on the sidewalk in the vicinity of the shooting. He didn't get left there in the confusion while people were fleeing. He didn't have anyone to help him get away, because both of his parents were lying on the sidewalk, dead.
Is that enough?
It's been difficult to write about this. Highland Park is less than an hour's drive away from where I live. It's a very picturesque, quiet, typical, Midwestern, American community that has become a suburb of Chicago, lying along the western shore of Lake Michigan. As people keep saying, "things like this just don't happen here." But they have been happening "here" for a while now. Personally, I had enough right after the Columbine shooting, which, just like this one, took place in a suburban community. In fact, most of the school shootings that have occurred have happened in the suburbs, or in rural communities like Uvalde, Texas, or Littleton, Colorado or Parkland, Florida. It's not just an urban problem, in fact, it is an everywhere problem.
Too Much Political Rhetoric, Too Little Common Sense and Zero Understanding of the Second Amendment
"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."
I could write a book on the history of this amendment, the circumstances which prompted it, and the massive, mistaken interpretations of it that have been made by our court system and politicians, much of it bought and paid for by gun manufacturers who are among the most profitable business owners in America. But the bottom line is that there is absolutely no interpretation of the second amendment that can leave out the well regulated militia part of it, which is its clear context, and focus on unregulated gun ownership. That's completely wrong. Beyond that, there is absolutely no guarantee of the right of an individual to own an arsenal of high powered weapons specifically designed to kill human beings by high tech mutilation of their bodies.
How many times, in the comments that have been made over these past weeks since Uvalde, as other mass shootings happen and then, this tragedy at a July 4th parade, has the statement been made, "We need to do something about this."
That's right. We need to do something specific. We need the common sense gun regulation that the people are asking for. This is a democracy. That is neither unreasonable nor is it a violation of the second amendment. Those who are part of a well-regulated militia are more than likely already provided with their weapons by the state that authorized the existence of their national guard unit, and a hunting rifle, hand gun or small calibre rifle for home protection is all that is necessary.
The first meaningful gun control legislation in years was passed by Congress fairly quickly after the Uvalde incident. That means that Congress does feel the pressure. We know that banning assault rifles works, because it has happened before, and the courts were fine with its constitutionality. So do what the people are asking to be done.
The first step toward doing this is to elect Democrats.
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