My Constitutional Right to Tanks and Fighter Jets

We seem to be living in a country where big money can spend whatever it likes to influence politics – Citizens United ­– and since the Federal Election Commission is deadlocked against meaningful enforcement, even with forbidden complicity of the candidates themselves, why shouldn’t those who can afford it buy even more. State legislatures – bolstered by a Congress fearful of alienating gun owners – seem to have annulled the entire first phrase of the Second Amendment as if it never existed.

A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

Comparison of best available civilian weapons today and

when the Second Amendment was enacted.

(Washington Post, 6/13/16)

  

Omar Mateen legally purchased his glock handgun and Sig Sauer MCX carbine (similar capacity to the above pictured AR-15 assault rifle, featured below) within a week before his murderous assault. Assault rifles use smaller, lighter rounds than most standard-issue rifles (makes the magazines lighter and easier to change) and are intended for closer use, able to spray targets with volume bullets making up for their shorter accuracy range. Since fully automatic weapons have been illegal in the United States since 1934, these “military equivalent” civilian weapons are semi-automatic; the shooter has to pull the trigger for each bullet released, but these assault weapons have one clear use: killing as many people in the shortest time possible.

The presumptive GOP candidate, Donald Trump, will accept a “slightly longer” waiting period for a gun purchase – no additional regulations at gun shows for private sales – but has unequivocally stated that we need more guns carried by U.S. citizens to stop “radical Islam.” He seems to think that “good guys with guns” never become “bad guys with guns” or that bad guys will always be able to be stopped by citizens with concealed or open-carry guns. Yet almost anyone – sick, demented, convicted or incapable – has access to guns in this country because there just are so many of them: one gun for every man, woman and child in the U.S. And with a ratio of over 30 (criminal) to 1 (justifiable) gun homicides, you have to wonder why anyone thinks more guns will make us safer.

ISIS can recruit lone wolves, even send packs of killers into the United States without any weapons, because the NRA has pretty much assured open access to whatever they might need, legally or slightly illegally. They can get it here! No problem. Take a look at the above Citylab.com (1/22/13) that compares gun homicides in American cities to entire countries. Look at Florida!!!

So if I combine the Congressional/Legislative paranoia at containing even assault weapons with large magazines – weapons specifically and solely designed for the military to kill lots of people quickly and efficiently – along with the notion that big money should be able to buy anything that a court can distort into a constitution right, we should d be able to buy any military-grade weapons our wallets can accommodate. Like a fully-loaded jet fighter? A tank? How about RPG rounds? We could just wait for the next mass shooting, knowing we felt bad after the last one… but we did nothing. Or we could simply read the Second Amendment and focus on those “well regulated” words… and get to work! Guns help our enemies not us!

I’m Peter Dekom, and I am just wondering if the NRA got a “thank you” note from ISIS for making it all so easy.