It kills 30,000 people a year in the US; 600 accidentally. It’s entirely preventable, and it would only take a single law to prevent all those deaths. So why are guns still legal in the US, and should they be?

Consider the circumstances under which the 2nd amendment was made. The states at the time were under the rule of a government that wanted to control them for profit. They had to consider whether ‘tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, or to take arms against a sea of troubles, and by opposing end them. They blasted their guns straight into the Atlantic.

Hundreds of years later, we really do owe our country’s very existence to guns, and the ability to get enough of them to oppose a government that oversteps its bounds.

Let’s talk about the Protect America Act, which allowed the government to monitor foreign electronic communications without a warrant. I would rather live in a country where every man and woman gets a fully automatic machine gun at age 18 than live with this piece of trash. It protects nothing, except perhaps the sliver of legacy George W. is trying to leave us: a broken nation.
More precisely, it leaves nothing to protect. This Act of fascism would shield telephone companies from being sued for cooperating with illegal government wire-taps. It’s the ultimate work-around, and a test of just how stupid the American populace is at the moment.

Let me draw a parallel. Sure, illegal government wiretapping remains illegal, and technically they still need a warrant, but get this, no courts! That’s right, the Attorney General just gets to decide whether or not to listen to your every conversation without your knowledge.

Consider the following situation, where suspending habeas corpus technically remains illegal but… oh right, we did that one too.

How about the following: let’s just get rid of warrants altogether! Why did we have them in the first place? From now on, the DA for every precinct can search and seize any house and for any reason.

Don’t like that? Well then you’ve got something to hide. Does that not sound suspiciously the way Nazi rhetoric must have gone 70 years ago?

On the other hand, gun manufacturers are clearly responsible for the use of their products. I think a child can sooner figure out the safety mechanism on most guns than how to get into prescription medication.

Quite frankly, you shouldn’t ever be shooting a gun unless you knew for sure you wanted to shoot that gun for a long time. There should not be accidents, and the blame lies squarely on the manufacturers. Our Cigarette boxes are half warnings, our coffee cups say “watch out, this thing that has always been served hot is also being served hot this time”, but our guns don’t have a huge sign on them saying THIS IS VERY DANGEROUS?!?

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