Don't Taze Me, Bro'
Tim Egan of the New York Times reports statistics that contradict & disprove the popular myth that an armed citizenry makes for a safer America. For one thing, people "with guns were four times more likely to be shot when confronted by an armed assailant than those without guns." And for another, Hawaii -- the state with the lowest rate of gun ownership -- has the lowest gun death rate in the country. Louisiana, by contrast, has the highest gun owership rate -- and of course the highest gun death rate in the country. Pass it on.
Once again, the Times has held back my comment, so here it is:
Like a good tea partier, I want to go back to the good old days of the Founding Fathers. I want my Second Amendment right to form a militia. We haven't had any state militias since something like the 1830s, & I'm hankering to form one. Without militias, the Second Amendment has been made moot. Think I'm wrong? Ask ultra-conservative Judge Robert Bork. In 1989, he said, the Second Amendment "guarantee[s] the right of states to form militias, not for individuals to bear arms.”
Not good enough for ya because Bork got Borked? Well, here's Republican Warren Burger, a former Chief Justice, on the same subject. He said that the N.R.A.’s interpretation of the Second Amendment was “one of the greatest pieces of fraud, I repeat the word ‘fraud,’ on the American public by special interest groups that I have ever seen in my lifetime.”
Okay, so that doesn't mean guns must be illegal, just because we don't have militias & the modern Court has allowed the NRA to perpetrate a fraud on the nation. So, with the tea partiers, let's go back to the 1790s & let everybody carry a musket. Keep your powder dry, boys.
An obsession with guns is a form of insanity unique to certain elements in this country & to terrorists, insurrectionists, the Mafia & drug cartels. The rest of us need to do all we can to end the madness in this country.
You want personal protection & a musket just won't do? Many states allow citizens to carry Tasers. Studies show a Taser does a lot better job at disabling an armed intruder (without killing him) than a gun does. And if you use a Taser instead of a gun on an intruder, you won't have to live the rest of your life knowing you killed a punk over an old TV & your laptop.