Cannabis & Firearms: The Problem With Politics
Posted: 2009.07.22 (03:13)
From my book in progress:
Do you think guns should have more/less restrictions? Do you agree with above statements and opinions? And are parties perhaps blinded in thinking their opponents are so adamantly wrong?Pride wrote:Two key issues often debated among liberal and conservative parties are the legality of marijuana and firearms. But in essence, these issues are similar. Both infringe on the constitution and man’s right to the “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness”. Both can be used destructively, and the legality of both has been brought up to prevent death. And finally, if made illegal, both can be easily smuggled and used on the black market and shortfall all efforts by the government to ban such items. And so it is interesting that the parties so adamantly oppose the issues, with liberals supporting gun regulations and conservatives advocating maintaining federal and state laws against marijuana. These political opposites are unable to allow their opponents to be correct, and stray only to the extreme ends. Unable to recognize the similarity of their fights, they stay separate and adamantly opposed to each others' views.
Concerning firearms, a frequent mistake is made among men of all political parties, though more frequently perhaps among conservatives. This error is in regarding the Constitution as a political bible, as if the people who wrote it were brilliant omniscient men who put down viewpoints and rules which will abide for the next million years, always relevant and clear-cut. This however, is not the case. The men who wrote the rules to govern the United States were ordinary politicians, no better or worse than those we have now, with their own share of flaws, mistakes, accidents, and gaps in knowledge. And to suggest that views relevant in the 1700s are still so today verges on ignorant. Times change. A perfect example is the current issue surrounding firearms. In the United States Constitution, the Second Article, Section 13 reads “The right of no person to keep and bear arms in defense of his home, person and property, or in aid of the civil power when thereto legally summoned, shall be called in question; but nothing herein contained shall be construed to justify the practice of carrying concealed weapons.” Our founding fathers, created the Bill of Rights shortly after British rule, which weighed heavily on their decisions. Americans of the time saw this important so as to deter undemocratic government, for self defense, and to maintain an organized militia. The size and strength of our current, two million strong army negates citizen action against both our own government and against other nations, knocking both the first and last reasons off our list. This leaves only self defense. In the 18th century, muskets made up the most technologically advanced personal firearm. It would take from half to a full minute to load, and could only fire one bullet at a time, which was horribly inaccurate at a length of more than 20 feet. Now compare this to modern weapons. Accurate from hundreds of yards, firing hundreds of rounds per minute. They can kill dozens of people, as demonstrated by school shootings nationwide. At the Columbine School Massacre, in which took the lives of fourteen students and a teacher, in addition to wounding twenty one others, the guns used were bought legally at Tanner's Gun Show in 1998. In the Virginia Tech Shooting, which took thirty two lives, the semi-automatic pistols used again were bought legally, sold to a mentally unstable man. Although we can only speculate, it would be much more difficult for these killers to access such weapons illegally, and perhaps the issue of obtaining such weapons on the black market would prove too much a hard ship for these unstable students, with little criminal knowledge.