Gun control in 2013 is a delusion. Every American in their right mind should avoid siding with the president’s contrary view that gun legislation is an issue that our country should be obsessing over.
The second amendment of the Bill of Rights in the United States Constitution protects the right of the people to own and maintain firearms. It states, “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.” Because it’s one of our rights as Americans. Period.
Taking the side of history that would require those in political power to convince Americans to willingly forfeit their rights to protect themselves as a citizen is a recipe for chaos. Jeopardizing this right would be an invitation for those same politicians in power to use this gain to work against the general interest of their country’s people.
If you live in a state like Maryland with gun laws like Senate Bill 281, the Firearm Safety Act which goes into effect next Tuesday, you would be restricted on the type of handgun you could legally purchase. That’s your government telling you that you won’t ever be able to legally own an automatic weapon. But it’s not like you would need an assault rifle to protect your home though, critics would argue in favor of legislation in California that would ban assault weapons in 2013.
The Obama administration’s urgent attempts at garnering citizen support in establishing laws against and limiting the rights of an individual gun owners under the call for “common sense,” has taken a stance that is proving to be futile. Congress doesn’t seem to be on board with the debate on guns, but the fact that new gun laws aren’t taking hold in Congress highlights the lack of substantial facts that should support gun legislation.
I’m simply a firm believer of the fact that guns don’t kill people: that people kill people. Disturbed individuals who are overlooked by those in position to administer psychological assistance, those whose behaviors go unnoticed, are the people who resort to acquiring weapons and consequently carry out acts of mass violence in their rage. A stigma connecting mental illness to violence has settled in the minds of the general public, despite the fact that our nation has seen a constant decline in violent crimes in the last two decades.
Meanwhile, the ratio of those so affected by mental disorders that they qualify for Supplemental Security Income (SSI) or Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) has increased more than two times between 1987 and 2007. According to a study on the epidemic of mental illness in The New York Review of Books, the average in people with mental disorders receiving SSI or SSID rose from 1 in 184 Americans to 1 in 76.
Despite mass shootings, we refuse to acknowledge the growing epidemic of America’s flawed mental health system and instead, we mask it as a cultural love affair with violence.
We must dismiss from our view that we are required to be citizens who blindly will support a movement simply because our politicians urge us to. We are the protectors of our family and our property who have the right to defend when threatened. We are still the people of the second amendment that the Bill of Rights essentially seeked to protect.
We must then warn our fellow citizens of the consequences of not protecting our guns and our rights, as the real fear lies in blindly supporting a politician in his last term, whose administration stands nothing to lose. If our government wants to take our rights and our guns away, we must draw together in defense and tell them to come and take them away.
