With yet another school massacre by a deranged assailant, the gun grabbers are back amping up their relentless jihad against the Second Amendment and demanding even stricter gun control laws.
In fact, laws already in place would have prevented this attack, had they been followed. This individual already was known to law enforcement as exhibiting violent behavior and threatening criminal assault. Such would have barred him from purchasing firearms. But those agencies, pursuing lofty social engineering goals — the “no arrest” policy for kids who would rather steal than study — chose to look the other way.
Yet somehow their failure is the fault of the National Rifle Association and millions of peaceful, law-abiding gun owners?
Curiously, confusion yet surrounds the meaning and intent of the Second Amendment. Like the rest of the Bill of Rights, it is a prohibition directed at government. Its authors had just concluded a bitter conflict against a tyrannical monarchy, a war that began with confronting His Majesty’s attempt to confiscate citizen-owned arms and ammunition. They were in no mood for a likely repeat of the king’s brutish usurpation by a future generation inflamed by political passion.
The gun controllers assure us that modern police forces obviate the need for do-it-yourself protection. But the spate of successful attacks by violent actors employing a spectrum of weaponry — guns, knives, bombs, vehicles — proves the futility of that expectation. Police are not chartered as an omnipresent public bodyguard.
Really, this is what the Second Amendment is for.
Dale Fitzgibbons
Cedar Rapids