Throughout much of the world, the right to keep and bear arms is heavily curtailed. In fact, it's not treated as much of a right. Instead, it's presented as a privilege, one that you may or may not get to enjoy based on countless factors.
And yes, a lot of people want it to be treated similarly here.
So far, while they've had some luck in some places, they haven't really made the anti-gun impact that some would like. Obviously, I'm fine with this, but the issue is that folks like you and me potentially outnumber those who aren't fine with it. That leaves the battleground as those who don't care one way or another.
That means anti-gunners have to sell restrictions to people's rights, and a writer at the Daily Kos seems to think they can do that by presenting it as not just a healthcare issue, but a national security one as well.
June 7 is Gun Violence Awareness Day – absurd on its face that we aren’t made aware enough by daily headlines more tragic and outrageous than the day before. Perhaps it means to be sensitive on that day, instead of numb to the evidence of pervasive, ubiquitous gun violence that is uniquely American. American Exceptionalism indeed.
It comes just after Memorial Day when we honor the 1.3 million who died in America’s wars – for the freedoms we enjoy today, we like to say. Paramount among our “freedoms” for a minority of Americans, is the right to have a gun. But 1 million have been shot just in the last decade and over 660,000 died (more than in America’s deadliest war, the Civil War) just since Republicans let the Assault Weapons Ban lapse in 2004.
It is a time when the number of these weapons of war increased exponentially in the civilian population and the ChristoFascist majority Supreme Court decided that guns have more rights than children have to live, more rights than women have over their body, overturning centuries of precedent and law to declare an individual’s virtually unregulated “right” to carry a gun. (The 2nd amendment says “well-regulated militia” and “arms,” not “firearms” or “guns”.). Indeed, New York can’t have its own gun control law to save lives, but Texas can damn women and girls and South Carolina can deny Democrats (Blacks) their constitutional right to equal representation.
Calling the Supreme Court "Christofascist" is how you know this is a serious person who should be taken seriously. </eyeroll>
Let's note that the Second Amendment actually doesn't supersede anyone's right to live, particularly children. However, most children who are killed with a firearm in this country are killed with one illegally acquired, meaning the laws that should have protected that life didn't.
As for a woman's right over their body, it should be noted that the Supreme Court left the issue up to the states. Plus, let's not forget that this particular issue isn't just about a woman's body but the body of an unborn child, which has to at least muddy the water a little bit, you know?
"But New York and Texas and all that stuff!"
Again, the Constitution is explicit on guns and isn't on any right to get an abortion.
The United States, with the most lax rules for acquiring a gun of any other nation in the world, has the most guns in civilian hands per person in the world, in fact, more guns than people: 120.48 firearms per 100 people – twice the rate of civilian firearm ownership of the next highest country, Yemen, at 52.8 guns per 100 residents; Canada has 34.7 guns per 100 residents. American civilians own 46% (393.3 million) of the world's 857 million civilian-use firearms.
We don’t have a militia anymore (we have an actual military), but 24.6 million Americans (one in 20) owns an AR-15-style assault weapon built for the battlefield, according to 2021 Georgetown University research.
And this is why gun rights are actually good for national security.
One, anyone who might consider an invasion of the United States has to account for the fact that we have more guns than people in private hands on top of our actual military. We have a large military, sure, but we have a larger civilian population that would need to be accounted for in such an attack.
That's probably why no one has the stones to do it.
Further, many of the Founding Fathers didn't like the idea of a standing army because a standing army has the potential to be turned against the American people. That's part of why they preserved the people's right to keep and bear arms as an individual right. They knew that if the guns were in the hands of the people, the state could not become tyrannical.
Yes, there's a standing army now, but the purpose of the Second Amendment wasn't just national defense.
Of course, in a piece that claims there are national security implications to gun control, the author does a piss-poor job articulating literally any. "But more people died over a decade than in the Civil War."
Yes, we had more "gun deaths" in 10 years than during the four years of the Civil War when the population was less than a tenth of what it is today, over a longer span of time. That's absolutely a fair comparison to make. </eyeroll>
So no, she didn't show her work or really anything except her extremist belief that we shouldn't be trusted with guns. The fact that her list of policies that should be implemented only barely allow anyone to own a gun is a testament to that fact.
But gun rights defend this nation just as surely as the Armed Forces.
