the basics of "gun control"

Possibly alternately titled "gun control for dummies" or "simplicity of gun control"

To start, the phrase "gun control" is misleading. Historically, gun control has been associated with attempts to disarm populations. The United States, having the right to keep and bear arms enumerated in the Constitution, has had a harder time disarming their people.

Disarming Americans is complicated by a number of factors. The states would have to all agree at the same time to ignore or rewrite the constitution. Considering that there is a mixture of red and blue states, that has not happened. Additionally, Americans are aware of the fact that their natural right to defend themselves happens to be enumerated in the founding documents of the country.

More to the point, Americans are aware of the OBVIOUS attempts to INFRINGE the natural rights enumerated in the Constitution. Given that, there is national murmuring about what to do should the government turn on its citizens. The general consensus is that military and police would never go along with it and the citizens would be safe from that particular tyranny.

Considering this, there are a few things about gun control that seem to be commonly misunderstood. For one, the militia is not the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines. The militia is "the people". Also, the weapons protected by the constitution would be those sufficient for defending a person or the people from threats to themselves or their country.

Of course there are certain shoe horned legislations which ban some of these weapons. Right or wrong, it happened and the people have not found a need to stand up and make an issue of it. That is one of the reasons that political currents push towards further limitations. Politicians understand that their agendas will usually not be realized with one piece of legislations, but rather chipped away over time.

- insert tragedy here: we must ban guns in order to prevent this from happening again.
sadly, this is an opportunistic use of tragedy twisted to attack the innocent by comparing unrelated concepts. this was made obvious in the recent senate hearings and subsequent followup comments by various people iincluding joe biden.

- nobody needs an ar15: the largest problem with this statement is that its not consistent with the subject at hand. there has never been a requirement that a person "need" to exercise a right in order to exercise it. most popularly as of late, Rosa Parks didn't "need" to sit in the front of the bus. in summary, we don't need to need an ar15 in order to have one. the government, if it wishes to take them, does however, "want" to take them away.

- nobody needs more than 7 rounds: this is a recently popularized statement. the biggest problem with this statement is that it falls back to the subjective term "need". who determines need? at what point does a third party defining need become infringement? defense experts, including police and military, have acknowledged that the more rounds available to a defender, the less that defender has to interact with the weapon beyond using it directly for defence.

- assault weapons should not be available to the public: this is the most frustrating argument. weapons are identified with a term easily marketed as FUD to those that have no knowledge on the subject allowing quick uninformed opinions to be formed. The weapons classified as "assault weapons" are so classified based on looks. their function is identical to other semi-automatic weapons, but they "look" scary. More to the point, considering that the 2nd Amendment was for defense against anything, modern weapons were required to provide defense.

Sadly, FUD (Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt), misinformation, outright lies, and political bullies seem to be twisting an important part of our Constitution against the people.

He's Got A Gun

This phrase holds many meanings.  Depending upon the situation, it can be a good thing, a bad thing, or a simple point of fact.

In a situation where the "he" is a criminal intent upon doing something violent, it has a very negative connotation.  It is a warning cry.  It is an exclamation of distress.

In a situation where help is needed, and somebody able to help has a gun, it is a phrase of hope.

In a situation where somebody is wondering who happens to have a gun nearby, simply out of curiosity, it is an indifferent answer to a request for information.

The simple act of "having a gun" is sometimes misconstrued to be an act of (or at least precursor) to violence.  At some point, society has let itself be programmed to think of guns as evil.  While not all have this opinion, there is significant evidence that large demographics have come to view guns as evil.

This change has caused many to fear guns.  Of course there are many houses with guns behind the door.  In point of fact, I see them all the time.   Some would say that I have become desensitized to their evil simply because I see them so frequently.  However, that is the contrary argument in that it is based on guns actually being evil.  We are actually seeing people being desensitized to the usefulness of guns.  

Nightly, we are faced with television programming (an apt word actually) where guns are either horribly evil devices OR they are salvation when in the hands of government employees.  I find it interesting that we are willingly subjecting ourselves to reeducation about guns.  How can we seriously allow ourselves to be trained to think that guns are bad when citizens have them, but somehow good when a random third party with three letters on their jacket has them?

There is no gun training available that makes their use sacred when controlled by the government and evil when controlled by the individual.  The best ATF/FBI/DHS agent in the world is still "following orders" from a third party.  By programming people to think that only the government can be trusted with guns, we are abdicating their use to the oversight of an often unnamed bureaucrat of which we should have no trust.