Community Columnist (or should I say, communist columnist) Jason McKinney seems to think that Constitutional Rights are like pet rocks, fads that come and go:
A couple of weeks ago, my wife and I flew to Memphis to see my dad. On the flight, we sat next to a young guy from Tennessee who was moving to Colorado to attend a two year trade school for gunsmithing. My wife chatted with him and eventually he brought up the subject of politics. He said,”I’m not political; I’m just concerned about my Second Amendment rights.”
Yeah, I am, too.
After the ongoing, unending spate of school shootings throughout this country, I don’t really give a d*** about your Second Amendment rights. What I do care about is sending my kids to school and knowing they are going to come home at the end of the day.
Source: http://www.broomfieldenterprise.com/broomfield-opinion/ci_25981319/mckinney-declaring-gun-rights-you-bear-responsibility-too
Funny, I give a damn about his First Amendment rights, even if he uses them to watch such mindless drivel.
I can understand that people use guns for hunting, sport, and in certain circumstances, to even defend themselves. My question (and concern) is do we really need semi-automatic weapons available to almost anyone?
Do we really need Jason writing mindless drivel? No, we do not, but since our constitution protects INDIVIDUAL RIGHTS, it doesn’t matter what we need.
Unfortunately, craven politicians are not going to advocate heavy-duty gun control any time soon. If they did, they would be voted out of office at the very least, or targeted themselves at the very worst. That leaves another option: To create better mental health care services and, at the same time, to start working to erode the stigma about receiving such care. If mental health professionals were seen as providing a much-needed service, we might be able to catch some of these cases of gun violence before they start.
The Santa Barbara Shooter grew up in therapy, was never institutionalized, and was able to jump through all the California gun control laws to get his gun. Yet we’re supposed to assume that gun control and headshrinkers are going to save the world. By the way, how did that 2-week waiting period worked out for him? Seems to me psychopaths are extremely patient.
The other alternative is Walmart. A friend of of my wife lives in New Mexico. She recently took her son shopping at Walmart. He wanted a toy gun and she refused. On leaving the store, she discovered he was able to walk by the sporting goods section, grab an actual gun, and carry it out of the store. Walmart’s security is so lax a toddler can carry a gun out of there with no one noticing?
Anecdotes mean little, I’ve been to Walmart, all the guns are either behind the counter or under lock and key. Just because some little kleptomaniac was able to grab something doesn’t mean this happens at every Walmart. As for Walmart security being lax? Guess what? Sometimes it is lax, sometimes there’s nobody at the gun counter, sometimes an employee has to take a bathroom break. What do you want? To turn Walmart into an airport? We did have a shooting at LAX, plenty of gun control and security there.
It’s not enough anymore to say that “guns don’t kill people; people kill people.” It’s simplistic thinking that is no longer acceptable. As a parent, every time that I see more gun violence on the news, I wonder whether this country is a place that I want to raise my children. If our society has become one where people can carry automatic weapons through Target or flash them at other drivers on Interstate 25, then where are the non-gun owning individuals’s rights? In being allowed to own an AK-47, why do you get to trample my children’s rights of being safe in school, a movie theater or a retail store?
No, assuming criminals are affected by your stupid laws is simplistic thinking. It’s also simplistic to assume that people are carrying automatic weapons when those are extremely hard to find and require a Class III Firearms license and a yearly visit from the BATF and plenty of money for both the weapon and the legal process to own them. It’s also sad you can’t tell the difference between the AK-47 and the AR-15. By the way, your children don’t have a right to be safe, they have a right to be free, and that doesn’t mean “freedom from fear” or “freedom from want” like that commie FDR told you.
I realize there is no simple solution to end gun violence. It won’t be solved simply by better mental health awareness and access. But by not also insisting on more safety checks, tighter regulations and more transparency when it comes to gun laws, we all must take some responsibility for the violence.
Owning a gun may be your right, but that doesn’t mean that you don’t play a part in the consequences that can result from it. If you own a gun that fires more than a few rounds a minute, then you’re participating in the kind of culture that if not supports, then at least accepts widespread violence. And that’s just not acceptable anymore.
I realize you’re the typical gun hater, completely ignorant about firearms, completely uneducated about constitutional rights, an emotional being more interested in obtaining a false sense of security than in defending the freedoms our soldiers fought and died for. My semi-automatic guns do fire more than a few rounds a minute, as fast as I can pull the trigger, and I own them not to defend myself from whatever violence finds me.
Owning a gun is my right, it’s even your right, but your column ain’t right, and I encourage my readers to let you know how un-American you are: .
Her son was able to open a locked glass cabinet inside a store, steal a real gun, and walk out of the store without her noticing? That’s some good parenting there.
That’s the problem with America today, we have parents who expect Walmart and others to do their job.