burn the constitution
with the shootings in virginia just a few hours old, i feel the need to write on this.
first of all, i am not some pussy commie boy. i was raised in a survivalist family by my father, who was a follower of the john birch society and have myself spent time in john birch society bookstores as a teen and read the literature. we all had guns and lots of them. and they were all registered, by the way - fully legal. went to the shooting range every weekend. my mother travelled with a loaded .357 at all times. my father had the same gun, the "bushmaster" used in the dc sniper killings. i was utterly obsessed with warfare and the military. we had a subscription to soldier of fortune and it's offshoot, survivalist magazine. i wore full camouflage to school every day. you get the idea.
i got picked on in school lots, because i was different. my life at home was horrendous. i fantasized about killing the jocks who tormented me. i was a time bomb. i had access to enough firepower to kill alot of people at my high-school if i had turned out to be a psychopath, but luckily i wasn't.
i had my friends to help me through it all. we helped each other and we made it. there are alot of kids out there who don't have any friends to help them through those tough years. they don't have anyone in their lives who is able to talk sense in them and/or meet them on their own level. they are alone and have fully legal access to instruments of death any time they want, courtesy of the nra.
in washington dc recently the nra patted itself on the back for a legal decision overturning the city's anti-handgun law. how the fuck can these people get any sleep? just a few blocks from the capitol building, people are slaughtered every day with handguns. i wish the winchester mystery house ghosts would inhabit every nra member's house.
as we all know, the american obsession with guns goes back to that most beloved of american documents, the constitution. that is the document mapping the freedoms of white, male landowners, i.e., rich white slaveowning men. at the time it was written they were the only people allowed to vote and be represented. oh, even the infallible thomas jefferson, deity of the libertarian party enslaved people, including his mistress, denying her desire to move to france where she could no longer be a slave as slavey was illegal there, all the while preaching a bunch of crap about freedom and how "all men are created equal".
i digress.
anyway, the right to have guns was so important to these folks that they gave it #2 billing, only behind the freedom of speech. remember that guns at the time were still single shot muzzle loaders there were no mp5s or ak47s. at the time, the 2nd amendment served many purposes. the american revolution was 12 years old and britain still wanted it's colonies back as was evidenced by the war of 1812. they also wanted a provision in the constitution that would essentially give the populace the tools(guns) for violently removing their government if need be. and last, but certainly not least, white folks needed to protect themselves against the "indian savages" as mentioned in the declaration of independence, whose land they just happened to have stolen. this gives you an idea of why this was put in and with such importance.
fast forward 200+ years. this document is out of date. to give you just how out of date, look at the next amendment, the 3rd, "no soldier shall, in time of peace be quartered in any house, without the consent of the owner, nor in time of war, but in a manner to be prescribed by law." quartered means "to provide with shelter." how is that relevant now? seriously. this amendment is a vestige.
the 18th amendment was the one that banned alcohol. it was a dismal failure. it was repealed 3 amendments later, with the 21st. i don't see libertarians or the nra whining about the 21st amendment, repealing the 18th.
at the time of the constitution's writing there were no genetics, potentially ultra-invasive nano-technology, computers, hummers, robots, google earth, global warming, etc. there are new situations being created every day that need to be addressed and antiquated issues that need to be dropped. i am not proposing that we burn the constitution - it is was made to be a starting point and evolve over time. if it hadn't evolved, black people would still be slaves, women wouldn't have any rights and so on. it's like a plant in that it is a living document that grows with time. but let us not forget that plants must be pruned as well to keep them growing.
the second amendment is dead. prune it.
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