The Second Amendment: "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 indicates that a militia is necessary to fight against any form of tyranny against this country and, secondly, it gives citizens the right to possess firearms. That's it, the intent could not be more clear.
But now, that amendment that allowed citizens to keep and bear arms, has been bastardized to the point that James Madison, who was instrumental in creating the amendment, and his fellow Founding Fathers, wouldn't be able to comprehend what it now has become.
How has it been bastardized? For example, where in that statement does it say that there should be no limits to what citizens of this country could do as related to their possession and use of guns?
Where does it say that the gun industry and its chief lobbyist, the NRA, should have the right to dictate and control what this government should do relative to citizens owning and using guns? It doesn't. Nevertheless, those in the current Congress, specifically Republicans, do exactly what these two gun entities tell them to do in exchange for dirty campaign money contributions.
Where does it say that anyone can buy and use, if they so choose, military-style assault weapons with huge ammunition magazines? It doesn't, but those murder weapons are being used in various parts of this country to gun down our children in their schools, people in churches and shopping malls, actually anywhere in America.
These corrupted politicians and the gun industry have managed, over a period of time, to successfully corrupt, to distort the meaning of the Second Amendment into what they want it to be.
Madison and those who helped him create this important amendment kept the language simple because, as previously stated, it was about maintaining the security of the state against threats of tyranny. They saw no need to go into great detail to cover all the possible interpretations because they, no doubt, trusted that future governmental leaders would take care of that.
How wrong they were.
They would be aghast at the mass murders becoming common in America, with domestic terrorists using powerful killing machines. They would be horrified at the fact that a large part of those in Congress, mostly Republicans, would fight tooth and nail to prevent the banning of them.
America has often been described by various presidents and members of Congress as being "exceptional." Well, I guess, in a way, that is the case. America is the only nation among the 32 developed countries in the world that has a government and a particular political party that allows these slaughters of innocent citizens to go on and on while doing nothing about it. Yes, that is truly exceptional, i.e., uncommon, abnormal, and deviant.
The children of America no longer feel safe in their schools knowing that, at any given time, they could be attacked. And when one of these terrible events take place at some school this president and his fellow Republicans in the US Senate send their "thoughts and prayers" to the families of the victims. What complete hypocrisy! After each one they go about their business, totally ignoring this massive problem.
In this country, we now have an American shooting gallery with Americans as the targets. Millions of people watch as these mass shootings continue and wonder if there is anywhere they can go where they could not be gunned down. The answer is that there is nowhere where they can feel safe anymore. That's a part of the New Normal in our society.
What is absolutely incomprehensible is how Republicans, in the past few years, watched as domestic terrorists killed 20 children at the Sandy Hook elementary school in Newton, Ct, 50 people at an Orlando nightclub, 59 attendees at a Las Vegas concert, and 17 students at Parkland high school. Just recently they watched as these murders took place in El Paso, Tx, Dayton, OH, and Gilroy, Ca. They took no action of any kind.
This is not just tragic, this is a national crisis, reaching epidemic proportions. Since the Sandy Hook shootings in 2012, there have been some 2,214 mass shootings with 2,494 people killed and 9,274 wounded. Here's a question I often ask: what kind of human beings can watch this carnage take place across our country, completely ignore it, and simply look the other way? That is evil of the highest order.
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