General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: The only purpose of "assault" weapons is to kill people. [View all]calimary
(81,220 posts)especially those who still suffer from PTSD).
I am in no way demeaning your service or sacrifice, or those of your brothers in arms. The ridiculous mis-read of the "right" to bear arms needs VERY BADLY to be revisited and rewritten. YES. And I think perhaps YOU should go visit the grieving moms and dads and siblings of those 20 children whose deaths you so cavalierly shrug off, and explain to them why this nutcase who killed their babies had the "freedom" to mow them down just as pretty as he pleased, because his "right" to have those mow-down machines is so damned sacrosanct and untouchable. Because heaven forbid, we're not allowed to try to keep extreme death-machines out of his cold dead hands, either, can we? YEAH. DAMN RIGHT I want to see that changed.
As I write this, I've got CNN on, and they're reporting about YET ANOTHER gun-crazy who took out a couple of volunteer firefighters TRYING TO FIGHT A HOUSE FIRE, as well as his sister, in upstate New York. And he finally relieved us of his own miserable self, too. The guy had another one of those bushmaster dream machines that you seem so adamant about any nutcase having. Without any background checks. Hell, his MOTHER owned the guns. She was a law-abiding citizen. Look how well that worked out for her.
And truly, I have to ask - have even you not had enough of this by now? You don't think this is an utter abomination? A complete abominable misread and misinterpretation and utter reckless abuse of the "right" to bear arms? I'm seriously not so sure that this would have translated from the original, or that the Founders of this country had in mind the "right" to mow down innocent people, NON-combatants, when the Second Amendment was crafted, and intended for the ability to resist an invading army from another country. Were those 20 children and their teachers some invading army from another country??????? And even if so, to follow the strictest interpretation of the Second Amendment, we'd all have to be using muskets - for all those self-titled "originalists" out there who think all things surrounding the Constitution should be interpreted and acted upon - with an 18th-Century mindset. Last time I looked, it was the TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY.
I recognize the sacrifice the rest of us are being forced to make, against our will and at great threat of bodily harm or death, for the freedom others feel they simply MUST have, to possess personal weapons of mass destruction. AS I'VE SAID in an earlier post - nobody's trying to take your handguns away. It's the assault rifles - instruments designed SOLELY AND SPECIFICALLY for mowing down large quantities of people, not just one enemy at a time. YES I'm against that.
And you and your fellows fought and sacrified, and indeed some of them died - for MY right to express my outrage about these needless crimes and senseless deaths, and to try to do something to stop them.