Mark Steyn: Vain search for meaning in massacre
(T)his time round the biens pensants have fallen back on "gun culture." Dimwit hacks bandy terms like "assault weapon," "assault rifle," "semi-automatic" and "automatic weapon" in endlessly interchangeable but ever more terrifying accumulations of high-tech state-of-the-art killing power. As the comedian Andy Borowitz tweeted, "When the 2nd Amendment was written the most lethal gun available was the musket." Actually, the semiautomatic is a 19th century technology, first produced in 1885. That's just under half-a-century after the death of Madison, the Second Amendment's author, and rather nearer to the Founding Fathers' time than our own. And the founders were under fewer illusions about the fragility of society than Hollywood funnymen: on July 25, 1764, four Lenape Indians walked into a one-room schoolhouse in colonial Pennsylvania and killed Enoch Brown and ten of his pupils. One child survived, scalped and demented to the end of his days.
2 comments:
One of the biggest things that the collectivists/hoplophobes dwell on is that the Founding Fathers never envisioned scary assault rifles and tanks and nuclear bombs. They ignore the very simple fact that at the time, Brown Bess muskets and Kentucky Long rifles (and their bayonets) and swords/sabers WERE state of the art 'military weapons'. They also conveniently forget the reason why the redcoats were marching on Lexington and Concord. Perhaps they need to study history...............
The argument that claims we should only be able to own arms that existed when the 2nd Amendendment was written, is as stupid as saying we should only be able to exercise our 1st Amendment rights based on the state-of-the-art forms of communication from the 18th century.
How many free speech advocates would agree to limit themselves to posters, newspapers, and pen and paper, or their mouth from a soapbox in the town square?
Since electronic communications are today's equivalent of the dreaded "assault weapons", using these tools are far too easy to defame someone's character by using mass electronic media to spread lies were millions of people can read their slander.
"Oh but blogs, Facebook and national news casts don't kill people."
Really? Tell that to the parents of the girl who committed suicide when her reputation is wrongly destroyed by lies posted by classmates on Facebook.
Tit for tat, if you have any intellectual honesty defending your anti-gun beliefs, you would have to agree then that the Governement should be the only entity to have access and use all forms of electronic mass media to "responsibly" dessiminate information on our behalf.
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