I got into a discussion today with someone who is more than a little bit liberal. It started when she asked what I thought about what was going on at Hampshire College. I told her that while I hate those people, they have every right to do what they want.
She asked why I hated them.
I told her I hate them because they are arrogant, self-centered hypocrites of the highest order.
These are people who stand on the Constitution and shout about their first amendment right to burn the flag & express their beliefs but then turn around and scream about how the framers of the Constitution did not foresee high-powered assault rifles, call gun owners "gun-nuts", claim that "guns kill people" when you know as well as I do that people kill people.
In my humble opinion, all you gun-nuts out there should be standing right next to the flag-burning assholes and defending their rights to do that. And you manbun-wearin' flag burning shitheads should protest whenever someone tries to pass laws that restrict someone's right to own a firearm.
You have just as much right to burn the flag as you do to own a gun and you should defend those rights no matter who you are.
And while I'm on the subject of teh Constitution, the next person that says, "We need God back in our country" is gonna get slapped with a Tora and a Q'uran.
I'll keep my guns out of your face as long as you keep your religion out of my government.
Listen up folks, the Constitution is not some off-the-cuff high-school term paper written by a couple of boneheads trying to pass a civics course. It is a well thought-out document that was created over a period of years. The folks that wrote it spent a good many hours debating every word and crafting it so that it was clear and concise.
When the framers were done with it, they sent it to the states and let them debate it. That was where the first ten amendments came from.
The argument, "The framers of the constitution were talking about muzzle-loading single-shot guns!" is invalid. They were pretty bright guys who understood that mankind would improve upon almost everything in existence, including guns. They might not have predicted rapid-fire weapons but they understood that something like that was possible.
They used the words "...
the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed."
Infringe is a word that means,"act so as to limit or undermine".
What they were saying is that the government shall not place limits on the right of a person to own and use firearms. No limits. Period. End-of-discussion.
They knew that things would change and they wanted to make it clear that there was no limit on what they were saying.
If they wanted to give the government the ability to restrict things, they would have said, "the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall be allowed" and we would all be allowed to own a muzzle-loader.
When it comes to the first amendment, they used the words, "
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech..."
Abridge is a word that means, "Curtail, reduce in extent or quantity; impose a restriction on."
What they were saying when they wrote that is that while it might be unpopular or nasty, the government cannot restrict what can be said.
Trust me, there were a lot of people saying a lot of awful things back when the Constitution was written. Anyone who thinks the residents of Boston or Philadelphia or New York were any different now than they were back then is living in a dream world.
What I'm saying is that you cannot have one right and give up others. You cannot pick-and-choose what rights we get to exercise. You cannot claim the first amendment protects your right to burn the flag but the second amendment doesn't protect the members of the NRA. The minute you begin to do that, we might as well toss the whole thing and start over again.
We either get all the rights outlined in the Constitution and its ratified amendments or we get none.
And by the way, if someone says we get none, me and 30,000,000 of my fellow gun owners are gonna have a problem with that.
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Now that I've made it clear that we are the luckiest people on the planet to be born into a country that has a document like the Constitution to frame its government, let's go look at some links:
