Resignation

Politics, you know I delve into it once in a while and sometimes write about current events here as well. If you’re looking for a post on zombies check back later.

I've had enough time to formulate a response to the ongoing gun debate here in the US and I think I've figured out what we need to do; Nothing. Accept it and move on. This isn't a flip, sarcastic or unfeeling response, I wrote that I had given this some thought and I have. First and foremost the 2nd Amendment is not going anywhere, nor is its defenders. Second the political will to pass any sort of legislation that would make an actual difference is not there and would just evaporate given the time it would take to pass something effective. Third, this isn’t the first time children have been slaughtered in our schools, judging by past occurrences and a lack of action we can reasonably expect the same this time around. Sure Columbine was a massacre of older students, but just because they were not as cute and cuddly as first graders doesn’t make it any less tragic. What changed after Columbine? For that matter what was in the process of being implemented after the Century Theater shootings of July 20^th, 2012? Not much amigos.

The pro-second amendment lobby (of which I am one, more on that in a minute) has correctly said that taking the rights away from everyone to prevent bad people from doing bad things is not the solution. There has been a huge outcry for making it more difficult to get a gun, possibly with mental evaluation, plus closing the gun show loophole and extending the waiting period for purchasing guns. None of those things would have prevented this disturbed young man from going into his mother’s home, taking one of her guns, killing her with it and raiding her gun safe before going on his shooting spree. The fact is this type of thing is not preventable. “Put armed guards in every school!” I’ve heard that mentioned by some small group here too. I was incredulous. At Columbine there was an armed guard who traded shots with the shooters and moments later armed police arrived, this was before the two killers were even in the library, which was their main killing ground.

So given these items I am reluctantly forced to admit to myself that as a country we are going to have to resign ourselves to losing people of all ages to gun violence. Is it worse to be shot and killed at work, at school…well anywhere or to live with the knowledge that every single person you interact with could be gone at almost any time? We are a nation that is going to have to live with dealing with horrible things.

Now on to that second amendment thing, I don’t believe it was written into our constitution so we could protect ourselves against burglars, armed robbers and school shooters; it was put there to protect citizens from the government. Sure, the thought of a guy with his thirty eight special going up against a soldier armed with a military rifle isn’t pretty, but it’s better than that same guy fighting that same soldier with only a knife. Our government is getting more intrusive into our everyday lives and our actual way of life is under attack, make no mistake of that. I do not think that the armed forces would blindly follow orders to suppress and kill fellow citizens; I think it would be uglier than that. Some would, some wouldn’t. We would degenerate into civil war. Drones dropped on us from above by people in bunkers thousands of miles away, suicide bombers, ambushes, skirmishes, IEDs, war without end. Why? When the rights of the people are taken away unrest and despair increase, not the reverse.

"When will your rights be restored if the battle has no end, and the battlefield is limitless, and the war is endless?" ~ Senator Rand Paul