Mark Rawls: The Justices' Gun Ruling

If you want to prove what hypocrites Scalia and the other 4 are, try walking into the Court with a gun. See how far you get. Ask where Scalia's office is and risk arrest. Then try using this decision as your defense.

Guns...the mere thought makes me cringe. But, I have guns in my home and I am rwa to use them. Gun regulation is sufficient for the general public. The criminals will get them no matter what the laws are. Given the past 7 1/2 years of corruption in government, I'll keep my guns, thank you very much.

You ever wonder why Washington, D.C. is always held up as the murder capital of the country; why Los Angeles' streets are drenched in blood;why New York city is such a scarey place after dark?

Because all the major media companies have major outlets in those cities, that's why.

According to DOJ statistics in 2006 there were 382 murders and non-negligent mansalughters committed in Alabama, while there were 169 reported incidents of the same crimes in D.C. I know the DOJ figures don't differentiate between firearms murders and those committed with rusty hatches etc. but I think we can safely assume that most of the mayhem was done with guns.

But, hey, Alabama's a long why from Georgetown, Beverly Hills or Long Island so who cares, right?

I am extremely progressive. I own guns, too. You'd be surprised how many lefty gun owners are out here. I really doubt that the people who do all the pissing and moaning about gun violence have actually experienced it. I doubt that the people who extol guns for protection have ever experienced it. The point is really that this is a non-issue. It is really based on misperceptions of what the people on each side are like. Liberals are afraid of rednecks, rednecks hate liberals. Get over it, and put your anti-gun energy into bringing about the rest of the progressive agenda. This isn't worth losing over.

Well, I can give you an example of someone interrupting an assailant. In fact, several of them, one lived through it and the other two didn't. Once upon a time in the state of Idaho two native American men escaped from the state prison and found themselves with a shotgun at the home of a woman along the Middle Fork River. They broke into her home. She recognized that this was happening and ran into her bedroom, locked the door, and shouted to them that she would kill them, with her own gun, should they try to break through her bedroom door. they shot through the door, she shot back, and killed the both of them. This did not take place during the 1800's. This is contemporary. Point being, if one lives somewhere outside the major cities of America. Washington D.C., N.Y., Chicago, Miami, L.A., one knows that this whole argument about gun rights, who should own them, etc. is a simple practical point of life. People living outside these major homicide realms comprehend that there are predators because life is filled with predators. They do not go wild. To them, only the people in the cities go wild. And, they are the only ones having the political discussion. The rest of us have no philosophical qualms about whether or not to protect ourselves.

If you examine both sides of the issue, you will find a number of emotional examples where guns caused someones death and other examples where guns protected someone against violence or robbery.

None of these example help us to find a solution. They doesn't even help us to define the problem.

Despite all of the nonsense about legal precedent, our founding fathers were operating in a "legal system" where the King did as he damn well pleased.

They decided that they did not want to live in a system where citizens were at the mercy of the state.

The Second Amendment made it perfectly clear that they believed that ordinary citizens should have the right to defend themselves - and in view of the Revolution they had just fought, they believed that their own new government had the potential to become as much of an enemy as King George. (The original King George.)

They weren't exactly shy about saying so. Of course today's anti-gun nuts are willing to lie about the intent of the 2nd Amendment and how people of the time viewed ownership of weapons. This was a period of history when duels were still fought. They weren't fought often, but they were fought.

When Alexander Hamilton (the Karl Rove of his time) came out with thinly veiled insinuations that Aaron Burr had too close a relationship with his daughter a challenge to a duel was both necessary and required - if Burr wished to continue to hold his head up in public.

Hamilton had a habit of insulting people and then giving an 'apology' that was really worse than the original insult. His weasel-worded apology to Burr was not accepted and the result was a duel where Hamilton was shot in the gut and died the next day.

So today in large letters, we see Buzzflash trumpet the overthrow of 230 years of legal precident. It's simply not true.

The pathetic part of all of this is that the authoritarians in our society support the 2nd Amendment and those of us who are in favor of individual rights are being duped into trying to overthrow the foundation of the rest of our rights.