Gun Control

 

Happiness Is A Warm Gun

Happiness is a warm gun (bang, bang, shoot, shoot)
Happiness is a warm gun, momma (bang, bang, shoot, shoot)

Maybe we shouldn’t be so happy.

It is once again time for the National Rifle Association, NRA, to offer thoughts and prayers and to remind everyone that guns don’t kill people, people kill people. Don’t tell them that it is people with guns that are killing people. They will point to the gun ownership rate in Switzerland which is comparable to the gun ownership rate in the United States and say that since murder rates are so much higher in the United States than in Switzerland, they will tell you that mental illness, unlocked doors, unarmed victims, or some other nonsense must be the cause. What they won’t tell you is why gun ownership in Switzerland is so high.

Every Swiss citizen is part of the army, i.e. the state’s militia. They are first conscripted into active duty and after honorable service are discharged with their rifle. That service rifle is to be used in the event that the militia, and remember they are still part of the militia, ever requires their service. Their gun is supposed to be only used in service of the state’s militia. It is not a weapon to be used against other citizens. If you are discharged from the militia, say because you are mentally unstable, then you do not have a gun. In the United States we still have state's militia. A state’s militia is just now known as its National Guard.

The full text of the Second Amendment to the US Constitution, which the NRA loves to hide behind, is “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. ( emphasis added). The late Justice Antonin Scalia, whose seat Justice Neil ”Not Merrick Garland” Gorsuch now fills, wrote the majority opinion in District of Columbia et al. v. Heller. In that opinion, he invented a right to self defense UNRELATED TO MEMERSHIP IN A MILITIA to justify the opinion that, even non-militia members should be able to own guns. Justice Scalia was supposedly an originalist. Uh, that is NOT what the original text says. If you are not a member of the militia then you have no right to bear arms. Unless the militia has said that it will require its members to provide their own guns, it does not appear that the Second Amendment protects even gun ownership by militia members. I do not believe that Salvador Ramos, the shooter in Uvalde; Payton S. Gendron, the shooter in Buffalo; Stephen Paddock, the shooter at the Las Vegas Music Festival; Adam Lanza, the shooter at Sandy Hook; Nikolas Cruz, the shooter at Stoneman Douglas High School; or ANY of the shooters in the tragic mass shootings were members of a state’s militia. Even if the Constitution did somehow protect gun ownership unrelated to a militia, which again is NOT in the text, only if you are stupid or a liar would say that those shootings were in self defense. It is up to the voting public to decide whether the NRA and its supporters are stupid or liars. Remember when you vote.