Alphecca

Confused Gun-Rights Editorial

In The Daily Mississippian, Meghan Blalock has an editorial that right from the title started out all right:

Owning firearms should be a protected right

Make no bones about it: I am a liberal who believes that guns in themselves are not evil.

Do I think it is acceptable for a “normal” citizen to own a gun for the purposes of self-protection and self-defense? Yes. In all likelihood, even if the government illegalized ALL guns, criminals would probably still be able to get their hands on them (although it might be a bit more difficult). Thus, if a criminal can get a gun, legally or illegally, I should be able to own one in case he or she breaks into my house with the intent to harm me or my family.

This right, however, should not extend into the realm of automatic weapons. The gun must have a child safety feature, and it should be made illegal for that person to re-sell his or her gun to whomever he or she chooses because you never know what kind of psychotic individual might then be the owner of the gun.

Also, when the founding fathers wrote that all American citizens should have the right to bear arms, there was no such thing as an automatic weapon. Guns that shot more than one bullet per pull of the trigger were not around. Now, there are guns that spray bullets easier than you can pick your nose.

Should these automatic weapons be legal?

NO. No, no, no.

If anybody can make a good argument as to why such weapons should be legal, or what positive purpose they serve in our society (or what purpose at all), please e-mail me or write an editorial about it.

A weapon that shoots bullets at a ridiculously rapid rate serves no real purpose in our society, other than killing people. If somebody wants to own a handgun for the purpose of injuring an intruder in his or her home who may be threatening his or her life, I am not opposed to that. Should a person be able to own an automatic weapon for the same purposes? Absolutely not. It is unnecessary, and you are more likely to kill the intruder rather than just injure him or her, which is also unnecessary.

Secondly, purchasing a firearm with a "child safety lock" should be at the discretion of the buyer. Operating, or unlocking those locks can rob you of precious seconds necessary to defend yourself. It is and ought to be up to the owner to --assuming they have children in the house-- secure those weapons safely so that kids cannot find or operate them. Let me give you an example:

Say you're home with your spouse. You have been forced (let's pretend we're in New Jersey in the year 2007) to own a "smart gun" which requires you to wear a micro-chip ID ring if you want to operate that gun. So, the ring/gun is "tuned" to your ring. A mutant breaks into your home and kills you. Your spouse grabs the firearm but it is useless because it won't fire unless she somehow gets the ring off of your finger and onto theirs. Two down. Time for the kids, the mutant thinks.

Or maybe the batteries have died in the ring or gun. Now, neither of you can operate the gun and you're both dead, again.

I'm not saying that integrated locks are a bad thing, just that the decision to buy a firearm that has one should be at the discretion of the purchaser.

I think that private sales of firearms should not be regulated by the state or federal government. I might want to give that 10/22 to one of my children for Christmas. Or, I might want to sell a pistol to a friend. If all personal, private, non-commercial firearm transfers had to be conducted at a police station, that would be tantamount to establishing a registry and no doubt a cost (read: Tax) would be applied to cover the cost.

As for the argument that since automatic firearms weren't around when the founding fathers wrote the Second Amendment, that's just opening a huge can of worms. Pornography, movies, TV, the Internet, Cable, digital cameras; none of those things were around when the First Amendment was written. Should we give up our freedoms and allow the government to ban or censor those? Libertarians such as myself say, No, no, no, no, etc." Freedom is not free and sometimes you have to take the good with the bad or you lose everything. Applying that same logic to the extreme could mean that all we are left with are black powder and muzzleloading rifles and pistols. The "modern" 1911 pistol wasn't invented until... Well, you know.

I can make some "good arguments" for ownership of automatic rifles. But actually, I don't have to. The Second Amendment didn't specify what types of arms I could bear and maybe I just want one. And as long as I'm not a criminal I should be allowed to own one. It's an arm and I want it. We don't need cars that can go 140 miles per hour but maybe we just want them.

Automatic weapons are rarely implicated in crime these days. Al Copone is long gone. They're big, hard to hide, and the federal license is expensive. Most mutants wouldn't know how to load or maintain and clean such a weapon, even if they could afford them.

I had high hopes for the editorial when I started reading it, but obviously that's been dashed. It's tough for a liberal to change her stripes.