The second amendment states: “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.” It seems pretty obvious to me that this
amendment was intended to protect the right of state militias to arm their
soldiers. Since soldiers used to provide
their own weapons, that made sense then.
It doesn’t appear to have much of anything to do with anything today
since soldiers no longer provide their own weapons. I realize
that the Supreme Court doesn’t see it that way, but then they also think
corporations are people.
But as much as I
would like to see assault weapons banned, the gun show loop hole closed, “cop
killer” bullets prohibited, and other common sense rules put into place to
regulate guns, this country is so absolutely inundated with guns that any new
laws would take decades to have any real impact even if we could implement them
successfully. The FBI estimates that
there are about 200 million privately owned guns in the United States not
counting those owned by the military, police, and museums. So even though there is overwhelming evidence
that we aren’t as safe as countries with fewer guns, the odds of doing anything
about it other than possibly addressing the most extreme cases such as assault
rifles seem hopeless.
What we can do
something about, however, is our mental health system. I can’t think of a single mass shooting
incident in which there weren’t advanced warnings that the shooter was in trouble. Yet we don’t seem to have the will or the
ability to do anything about it. The
troubled person is simply allowed to exist on the fringes until they pop. I’m not in any way excusing the actions of
these people, but they don’t suddenly appear out of nowhere. There are nearly always one or more people
who know that the person needs help or presents a danger. Yet our laws and our regulations make it
difficult or impossible for authorities to do anything about it until the
person actually goes off the deep end and does the unthinkable. This needs to change.
I’m not a mental
health professional, so I don’t know the details of what a solution would look
like. I do, however, know that there are
people out there that we need to be protected from. If they can be helped, then we should get
them help. If they can’t be helped, then
they must be restrained. I know that
this is a slippery slope with great potential to infringe upon the rights of
innocent people. However, I also know
that doing nothing will yield the same result it always has – these things will
just continue to occur at a far greater frequency in this country than in the
rest of the world combined.
How about if this
time we skip the fruitless and temporary discussion of controlling guns and get
serious about the discussion of mental health.
We really need to do something different.
