Message to Those Hiding Behind the 2nd Amendment

Get your guns off our streets!

All those in favor of the rights of unregulated militias to bear arms should get in line to wash innocent blood from their hands...

First in line with his blood-stained hands, should be National Rifle Association leader Wayne LaPierre who told the Conservative Political Action Committee in March 2009 that "the guys with the guns make the rules".

The warning signs have been there for some time now. In August of 2009, a gun rights activist spurred controversy by bringing an AR-15 assault rifle to a rally outside the Phoenix Convention Center, where President Barack Obama was scheduled to speak. "He was clearly there to intimidate people who were there exercising their First Amendment rights,” one witness said.

That same month, self described Libertarian William Kostric showed up to a rally outside a town hall meeting with President Obama carrying a pistol. He also carried a sign quoting from a quote from Thomas Jefferson,

The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.

Well, that it was, last Saturday. Only if we can learn from the Tucson tragedy, that is.

Some - many - thought the tragedy waiting to happen would happen in Arizona. Representative Giffords certainly saw the looming danger. On March 25th last year, she said,

I think it’s important for all leaders, not just leaders of the Republican Party or the Democratic Party … community leaders, figures in our community to say, ‘Look, we can’t stand for this.’ I mean, this is a situation where people really need to realize that this rhetoric, and firing people up, and even things … For example, we’re on Sarah Palin’s targeted list, but the way she has it depicted has the crosshairs of a gunsight over our district. And when people do that, they’ve gotta realize that there’s consequences to that action.

Until last year, Arizona was an "open-carry" state. That meant anyone legally allowed to have a firearm can carry it in public as long as it's visible. Last year Arizona became a concealed-carry state: Arizona residents at least 21 years old can carry a concealed weapon without a permit.

I am persuaded that Pima County Sheriff Clarence Dupnik represented the law enforcement community Saturday, when he blamed

the vitriolic rhetoric that we hear day in and day out from people in the radio business and some people in the TV business....The bigotry that goes on in this country is getting to be outrageous. And unfortunately, Arizona, I think, has become sort of the capital. We have become the mecca for prejudice and bigotry.

But the current cant of the corporate media to the effect that both sides need to tone down political speech is a diversion. It doesn't matter if the shooter was a member of the Tea Party or the Weathermen, a neo-Nazi, a Communist, a Fabian or a member of the Flat Earth Society. What does matter is that he expressed himself with a gun fired at an elected representative.

Despite his apparent delusions, Lougher was coherent enough to know that he would be allowed to carry out his crime without meeting any resistance from police or other law enforcement officials, at least until after the fact. Loughner knew he was acting with the law when he purchased the semi-automatic handgun used to carry out the shootings at a local gun shop. He also knew he'd be allowed to carry the weapon to the “Congress on the Corner” event where the shootings took place.

This is called an assassination attempt, a kind of personal, freelance coup d'etat. Any murder of one for political reasons is civic cancer; it eats at the core foundations of democratic polity.

I just want to see guns regulated/licensed/registered like automobiles. After all, laws generally license the privilege of driving a car; and they restrict that privelege from people with serial DUI's on their track record.

Additionally, people with guns in their homes are not the problem. It's people out and about with guns on their belts and in their cars who are the problem. I may trust you, dear reader. (Actually, I think I'll suspend judgment on that.) But I absolutely don't trust that guy standing next to you. Or the woman behind you. Not in the shopping mall. Not at a football game. Not in the national parks. Not on college campuses. Not at my place of work. And not at  political events. Not at all.

It is time for us, as a nation, to take up the unconstitutionality of standing un-regulated militias.