Rifling the Second Amendment

The nearer to cities Americans live, the more nervous they are about guns.  There must be some proportional relationship to this gun-anxiety.  The closer you are to a city, the higher the crime rate will be and the more likely it is that some percentage out of the hundred or so people walking on that sidewalk is a criminal carrying an illegal firearm.

The farther out you go into the suburbs on the other hand, the percentages differ.  Thrown in with the criminals are the homeowners trying to protect themselves from the criminals, the rifle-rangers, and the Bambi, Yogi, and Thumper shooters.  This last group doesn’t have a very good reputation in the commuting suburbs, where residents are perfectly happy to share their property and their garbage with the black bears rather than shoot them.

Finally, out in the exurbs, the rural countryside, it’s the happy hunting grounds.  In the Catskills, the Adirondacks, and the Poconos, hunting (and fishing) is the favorite sport.  There are plenty of deer and bear, plenty of room, and plenty of hunters.

Watching a number of period movies (The Last of the Mohicans, Oklahoma, and Pride and Prejudice), I wonder how modern suburbanites would have fared, growing corn, fattening hogs, milking cows, and slaughtering geese and chickens?  Especially that last part.  How would they have felt about shooting little bunny rabbits that got into the carrot patch or wolves that were threatening the livestock?

This month, Obama is expected sign on to the U.N. Gun Ban Treaty.  Criminals will declare whatever the official date is a national holiday, and Obama will probably issue an Executive Order mandating such a holiday.  People in New Jersey will be ecstatic – at least until the deer run amok on Rt. 287, totaling cars and occasionally killing people (usually the front passenger).

No doubt, state governors will order the carcasses to be distributed among the poor.  Wait – can they even do that?  That may be against some new nanny state health ordinance.  Garbage can and garage door manufacturers will see a boon in sales as bears mangle suburban garage doors to get at the stored garbage.

Residents closer to the cities already know all about the various gun regulations; how you have to keep it locked up in its box at all times, with the ammunition stored in a separate place.  In New Jersey, you have to carry the gun disassembled.  You can just hear some hapless citizen crying out to a mugger, “Hey, can you hold on just one more minute before you rob me?  I can’t find my bullet.”  By the way, the treaty is going to be debated at the United Nations building in New York City.  Look out, Turtle Bay.

This treaty causes all sorts of Constitutional problems, as well.  According to the National Rifle Association’s Legislative Action website: 

In March of this year, U.S. Sen. Jerry Moran (R-Kans.) introduced legislation to prevent any arms treaty from infringing the right to keep and bear arms in the United States. The “Second Amendment Sovereignty Act,” S.2205, would prohibit the administration from using ‘the voice, vote, and influence of the United States, in connection with negotiations for a United Nations Arms Trade Treaty, to restrict in any way the rights of United States citizens under the second amendment to the Constitution of the United States, or to otherwise regulate domestic manufacture, assembly, possession, use, transfer, or purchase of firearms, ammunition, or related items, including small arms, light weapons, or related materials.’

Now, if this were a House bill, it would be a sure shot to be passed.  However, this is a Senate bill and we all know who controls the Senate – at least for the being.  Part of the bill calls for defunding any support of this treaty.  If the current Senate debates this bill, it’ll stand a better chance of passing than I would have putting a hole in the side of a barn.

So what’s the problem with the U.S. ratifying this treaty?  Everybody except hunters and criminals hate guns and the criminals have no problem getting the tools of their trade.  The question is who’s going to enforce, here and around the world?  What’s going to stop internationally criminal countries from producing weapons?  All the diplomacy in the world hasn’t stopped Iran.  Or China.  Or North Korea.  Looked how well diplomacy worked during the Cuban Missile Crisis?  The Russians were practically within sight of Cuba when Kennedy stopped fooling around and brought out our own big guns.  And even then, he had to agree to close all our military bases in Turkey.  Who really won that show-down?

If the treaty passes, all the decent people of the world will be unarmed.  They will live in a world where it will be illegal to carry or use something they’re loth to use anyway.  The evil, on the other hand, will be well-armed.  Even if you’re a non-violent person – so who cares if the Communists take over the world, we can still get by – Communist countries are known for their food shortages.

I love animals.  I can’t even swat a fly.  But when hunger rings the dinner bell and you’re starving, your kids are starving, and Bambi’s father goes strutting by, cruel as it is, you’ll wish you had that gun in your hand.

But more than watching your next meal walk off into the twilight, you’ll start to wish you had that gun for another reason:  to shoot the lock off the cage in which the Communists have imprisoned you.  Oh sure, now you say, ‘what’s the harm in giving it a chance?’  The Communists, like all good ideologues, have a cunning way of whitewashing the defects in their plan.  They know what the problems are, but since they don’t want to lose power, once you’ve voted them in, you won’t be able to vote them out again.

You won’t be able to own property.  You’ll work at the job they tell you to work at.  They’ll ration everything under the sun in the name of not overproducing anything or making a profit.  You can try praying to God; just don’t do it publicly.  Eventually, they’ll need a religion as an “opiate of the people” and the “opiate” will be Islam, from which there is no escape.

Well, what are we Christians worried about, anyway?  God already commanded that we should not kill (murder).  Still, our human sides would feel a little better if we could defend ourselves.  Somehow, we just don’t see ourselves as sheep for the wolves.  We want to live – in peace if we can.

If God told us to throw away all our guns, that would be different.  I don’t own one anyway.  God isn’t telling us to throw away the guns; someone else is, someone who shouldn’t be trusted to make such a declamation.  God said not to kill.  God also said we should have no other God but Him.  He also said not to tempt him.  That is, don’t throw yourself in front of a tornado so God can save you.  Don’t throw yourself in the way of a gun (unless it’s to save someone else’s life).  He who takes up the sword shall die by the sword.  Or the gun.

There are better ways to solve problems.  But until there are better people we won’t find those better ways.  The best ordinary people can do is not live or go anywhere near people who use guns to commit crimes, and pray they’ll never encounter any.  However, with the Communists plotting to herd us all into city communes, we’ll be sitting ducks for criminals who don’t care what God or the Government says.