“and described our founders as slave-owning bigots.”
Very few of our founders actually owned slaves. What a numb-skull.
Our Founding Fathers knew that our form of government could become tyrannical and added the Second Amendment as a safety stop. Through out history tyrants and dictators have sought to disarm citizens as a means of assuring their power.
The problem is not the 2nd amendment. It is the 1st. Suicidal Psychotics who want to go out in a blaze of infamy have this perfect opportunity while media broadcast to the world every thought and detail of their life. No one paid any attention to them while the lived but now...
The scale of tragedy is much different but the mindset is the same as the streakers at MLB games in the 80’s. “Look at me! Someone notice me!” We never see streakers anymore since the media stopped showing them.
Saddly the power of profit is more alluring than broadcast responsibility. But if those in media truly want these mass murders to cease they simply have to look to their own policy in sports broadcasting.
The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC study “Global Study on Homicide 2011” came up with some pretty amazing statistics.
In the US there are 90 guns per 100 persons and 4 murders per 100,000.
In El Salvador less than 2 guns per 100 but 75 murders per 100,000.
In Korea and the UK, less than 1 gun per 100 but 3 per 100,000. (They kill with knives)
So even the UN, most certainly NOT a pro-gun organization has found that........
killers are going kill with or without guns.
“The United States averages just 16 shark attacks each year and slightly less than one shark-attack fatality every two years. Meanwhile, in the coastal U.S. states alone, lightning strikes and kills more than 41 people each year.”
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2005/06/0613_050613_sharkfacts.html
“The average death toll per day is about 20 youths — more than that of the Columbine disaster, and more than the average number of youth shooting deaths per year in schools. Considering how many hours each year that teenagers spend in an educational institution, it would appear that they are much safer in school than out. This is not to minimize the importance of the Littleton and other similar tragedies; we are simply trying to put the problem of youth homicide in perspective. As serious as school shootings are, the body count is very small when compared to the total death toll.”
http://www.religioustolerance.org/sch_vio4.htm
It's a matter of perspective. Most people just have no idea how BIG our country is, how HUGE the world is, how vast our oceans are. Without this perspective they misjudge almost every situation. They want simple solutions to complex problems. They want to apply global solutions to local problems. They want to “fix” things that CAN'T be fixed.
Evil is in the world. Sin is in the world. We can not eliminate them.
Let us use this time for deep reflection and soul-searching on how our society has failed to preserve our Declaration of Independence's assertion that individuals' lives and liberties are "endowed by their Creator," and, because of that "self-evident" truth, are unalienable, and cannot be "disjoined," only "destroyed."
Let us introduce into the "national discussion"--insisted upon by our President--the very real fact that only 7 to 8 years ago these little innocent ones were in the safety of their mothers' wombs--invisible to the world, and visible only to their Creator. There, they possessed the same attributes and potential which is mourned today.
Because they were allowed to continue their development through the birthing process, they became the named children whose memory is honored and treasured by all. Long before they were named by parents, however, according to the same scriptural sources cited in Sunday evening's Memorial Service, they were known by their Creator.
A nation whose very reason for Constitutional protection for life and liberty lies in the ideas understood and expressed in the document of 1776 simply must be called upon to re-examine that unique idea at a time like this! To do less is to dishonor the loss of these children's lives, as well as to ignore another great national tragedy--our failure to respect life at all of its stages of development and/or physical decline.
"The God who gave us life, gave us liberty at the same time: the hand of force may destroy, but cannot disjoin them." - Thomas Jefferson
Any time a firearms-related thread is created on FreeRepublic, please be sure to add the "banglist" keyword to it so that interested FReepers don't miss it. Just a suggestion.
Let Freedom Ring,
