The New York Times on Guns

by Sandy Keathley

I was going to write about target shooting today, but came to realize that today, gun owners are the targets. Consequently, I will have to stray off-topic again.

An editorial writer in the New York Times today suggested that, 100 years ago, the automobile (or horseless carriage) was a major public safety issue, and that the problem was mitigated not by banning cars, but by making them safer. Speed limits, driver's licenses, driver training, seat belts, and air bags all came into play to make cars safer through regulation. He would think that; liberals always want more government interference in our lives.

I am reminded that the great political philosopher Charles Krauthammer said, "liberals are in favor of letting you do whatever you want, as long as it is mandated."

The NY Times writer believes that making guns, like cars, safer, only requires benign actions like

• requiring a type of background check that will, of necessity, require national registration
• trigger locks
• "smart" guns, that only respond to the owner's thumbprint
• and, inevitably, home inspections by a Federal police

Here is my suggestion for additions to the Penal Code:

PC 101.635{5}{c}
Upon suffering a home invasion, the homeowner or legal occupant of the premises will loudly announce to the alleged criminal(s), in both English and Spanish, the following disclaimer (verbatim):

You have illegally entered my domicile. Please wait while I find the key to my trigger lock. At that point, we may both begin to shoot. As you are the visitor, you may go first.
What the editorial writer seems to have missed from his 9th grade Civics class, is that the Founders gave us the right to be armed, not primarily for self-defense, or even hunting, but as a defense to a government gone wild. They had already gone through that, with a British government that was out of control, led by a King who was widely believed to be mad (late in life, King George III did, in fact, descend into literal madness). Anyone who reads the history of the Constitutional Convention, and/or the Federalist Papers, will understand that the American colonists would never have ratified the 1787 Constitution unless it included a safety valve against government over-reach. That safety-valve was, in fact, the existence of an armed population. That has never been necessary, and I hope it never is, but it cannot be dismissed out of hand as a deterrent to an out-of-control Executive branch (don't get me started on the current administration).

I don't expect to ever have to take up arms against the government, simply because they reasonably believe there to be 100,000,000 guns in America, and they don't know where they all are.

In Germany, in the 1930s, the government asked for gun registration, "so we will know where they are in case of a national emergency."  Once they knew where they were, they confiscated them in midnight raids. That was followed by making Jews wear a star so they could be identified. That was followed by putting them on trains to the death camps.

Every country in world history that has enacted gun registration has followed that with confiscation, so that only police, military, and criminals had guns. Look up Australia, Canada, and Cambodia.

The 2nd Amendment is not now, nor has it ever been, about hunting or sport. It is about keeping freedom.