Not Much Hope for Gun Control.

There's something that I find inconsistent about the NRA's position on the Second Amendment. It's the fact that, while they will defend the right to keep and bear almost any kind of firearm without any consideration of the gun's killing capacity or lethality, nevertheless they do seem to recognize that there are limits to the constitutional right granted by the Second Amendment. The NRA doesn't claim to defend a person's right to keep an functional howitzer in the garage or a bazooka in the bedroom closet.... at least not yet, so clearly the honchos at the head of the NRA recognize that there is some level of firepower that just plain goes too far. The guarantee protecting gun ownership, then, seems to be a matter of degree, and not essence.

My personal opinion is that the real flaw isn't in the NRA or in the Second Amendment. The real flaw is in the Constitution of The United States itself. Every other democracy with a working constitution has a mechanism built into it that makes it possible (but not necessarily easy) to change provisions that prove to be unworkable. Other constitutions recognize that nothing is perfect. But here in the U.S.A. we only seem capable of dealing with absolutes. Our religions are absolute in the certainty of their beliefs. Our political parties are absolute in their sense of self-righteousness. And our Constitution is invested with a sense of absolute perfection. In a sane country with a realistic constitution, the Second Amendment would have been eliminated many years ago because of its intrinsic irrationality and threat to human life. But for those of us in America, absolutism trumps sanity every time. Don't expect much from Obama on gun control.

When is Enough Considered Enough?

Here's something the NRA won't tell you. Since Robert Kennedy was assassinated in 1968 and counting up to last week's massacre in Connecticut, the 44-year running total of murder victims in America whose lives were taken by gun violence is actually greater than the number of American military service members who have given their lives in all the wars undertaken by our country since the beginning of our history in 1776. In this comparison, the American Civil War is counted as a war rather than as domestic gun violence. No enemy nation (or group of nations) on earth can kill American citizens with anything approaching the furosity and frequency of gun violence inflicted by the American population on itself in just the last 44 years. No other nation on earth (including modern Syria and North Korea) kills its citizens the way that we do.

Of all the guns on earth owned and used as personal firearms, more than half are owned by Americans and are kept in the homes of individuals. We have more guns than people in America. And all of this is made possible by the Second Amendment. The problem is this... the Founding Fathers who wrote the Second Amendment never told us how many guns were sufficient. When is enough considered enough?