Presiden Debate Meltdown keeps blurping that Biden is gonna “end the 2nd amendment.”
How? Am I missing some extra legal power Biden has promised to grab upon eventual defeat of Typhoid Trump? How is Joe gonna end 2a? Will it be after he whips out a switchblade and hurts God?
I’m kidding but not. A candidate fo potus seems at though he doesn’t know how our government works. Our constitution. That’s after 4 years in the job.
Well, almost EVERY candidate from the Democratic Party has thrown red meat to the gun-grabby segment of the base.
Biden is no exception.
But aside from two or three regulations, I seriously doubt the Democrats would have any luck taking away America's guns.
They wouldn't even be able to muster enough support from inside their own party.
The secret sauce is to simply frame the 2A in proper perspective because the 2A is perhaps unique.
It's an amendment that describes what many feel are natural rights, even "God given rights" if you ask some folks.
But contained in it is the power to drastically alter another human being's freedoms, their health or to even take away their life, thus it is the kind of power that demands commensurate responsibility and accountability.
Clarifying those things without imposing unreasonable hardships on law abiding citizens is the challenge.
It is absolutely necessary that a bar of merit accompany full access to 2A powers for the simple reason of societal self-preservation.
Nobody wants the powers of one amendment to threaten the rights and powers of another amendment, and irresponsible and unaccountable exercise of 2A rights definitely leads to attacks on several other rights enshrined in other amendments.
And the fact is, we already do HAVE plenty of workable laws on the books which are well established and mature, but the issue is our ability to enforce those laws adequately and with an even hand.
No amount of regulating the devices themselves will ever accomplish as much as reinforcing proper respect for the right to own and use them. We've learned that in so many ways already.
Take substance impaired driving, for instance. It is still every bit as possible to go to a bar, get plastered and get behind the wheel of a car as it was in the days of "Mad Men".
But today, the penalty for doing so is enormous, whereas in Don Draper's day it was a slap on the wrist.
Society views drunk driving as the nadir of social responsibility and a habitual drunk driver is seen as a pariah.
In the days of my youth it was generally regarded as a rite of passage and something that was chuckled over.
In fact, I'll never forget the night two Kensington Maryland cop cars accompanied a friend's drunken father back to the house.
One drove in front the him and one drove in back of him as he meandered wobbily down Cedar Lane, and they didn't even flinch when he bounced off the curb turning the corner into our subdivision or when he graced his front lawn with the front half of his car, leaving the rear tilting crazily at an angle and jutting out into the street.
And dear old drunken dad wasn't some special guy. He was an accountant for the GSA, nothing more.
He had gone out to get one more case of Carling Black Label bottled beer, after having finished off the remainder of the previous night's case of longnecks. And the Kensington cops recognized his pathetic old Renault Dauphine wobbling down the road and ignoring the red traffic light at Knowles Avenue.
He got a ticket for the red light and he got an escort home and fell asleep in his own bed.
We learned to do better re drunk drivers.
We need to learn to do better with guns.
But it is not the fault of the guns, it's the fault of the loose nuts who sometimes own them and act irresponsibly.
