The democratically supported ban on handguns in the District of Columbia is being challenged in the Supreme Court today. In addition to the ban DC requires rifles and shotguns kept in private homes to be unloaded or to have a trigger lock. You would think that to be entirely reasonable.
I can’t imagine why I am concerned. Provided I have a loaded revolver on me at all times I can shoot myself out of any difficulty. Others do it in Idaho and such places. We must stop being wimps. If some innocent gets hurt it’s o.k as long as the Second Amendment is upheld. I’m sure it will be very jolly and make people outside the District very happy. I’ll be thrilled to walk around the streets at night. Will any member of the NRA reading this like to join me? (no, of course not!). I am posting this under science and rationality, because lifting the ban seems so utterly rational and helpful in the context of 2008. Perhaps we should re-institute hanging for stealing a sheep. After all, that also was current law back in the 18th Century.
60% of D.C residents strongly support the existing law and 16% somewhat support it. Only 15% strongly oppose it, and yet the democratic wishes of the people of the District are in all likelihood to be ignored by a minority who seem to be casually unconcerned about further gun deaths, accidental or deliberate. Politicians in the nation’s capital will be especially delighted to know that potential assassins and terrorists are roaming the streets armed to the teeth.
As a small aside, I was for a while in the army on active service. In my capacity as a junior officer I did extensive target practice both with a revolver and a sten gun. We also to did informal practice shooting at vultures from about twenty yards or so . The bullets ruffled a few feathers but we never hurt a single vulture. In a firefight we were collectively even more inaccurate. This might reflect on our competence and training, but the reality is that under pressure and in fear it is very difficult to hit even a stationary target with a handgun. It’s o.k in a film studio, but seldom in real life. Ask an honest soldier in Iraq. Do these gunnies have a clue when they want us to defend ourselves in the street? It is juvenile.
Epicurus would laugh if he didn’t first cry. But then, like myself, he wasn’t born in the United States, so would find the fixation on guns incomprehensible.
I would not sound so concerned if my life, and that of my wife, were not potentially on the line for no purpose whatsoever but to please a bunch of ideologues at that bastion of open-minded democracy, the National Rifle Association.
Go away! Leave us alone, with your activist Bush-appointed judges! Let democracy and freedom reign.
It’s all part of stoking up fear among ordinary people. They claim to be upholding the Constitution, but what their real agenda is is to make you frightened to walk the streets and to encourage you to buy a gun. We need a government that brings people together not one that is constantly frightening us about our neighbors.