The smartest men this country has ever seen are the Founding Fathers. Each one of them, from Madison to Jefferson to Adams to Hamilton, are some of the smartest men the world has ever seen–and maybe will ever see. And no, this isn’t some pipe dream about how we need to take this country back to 1776. I say all of this because they built a country through violence and terror. They killed lots of people: in horrible ways. They overthrew the largest kingdom the world had seen up until that point, through guns. They understood what guns meant to the people. You can have all of the checks and balances in the world, but if the people can’t protect themselves from the government, then who will?
When the Second Amendment was written by James Madison, he realized that the people of the country deserved the ability to fight back. In fact, Thomas Jefferson even said “Dissent is the highest form of patriotism.” In fact, when you read the whole one sentence that comprises the Second Amendment, you find the key part of the amendment: “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State.” We are supposed to have militias and guns because if we can’t protect ourselves and we have some megalomaniac at the helm of the country, we need to be able to take up arms and fight the government in a time of need.
So when people say that we don’t need guns–maybe you don’t–but the country needs guns. It doesn’t make you some sort of crazy cuckoo bird if you think that the government might take over if they take away your guns. The American government isn’t some deity from Christ himself, who can do us no harm or foul. In fact, I would argue that the government is the complete opposite of that.
Gun reform is something that we do need in this country, true smart reform that is based on common sense. The mental health of America is, for lack of a better term, abyssmal. 1 in 4 Americans suffer from mental illness, and 1 in 3 Americans own a gun. This means there’s a 100% chance of someone who shouldn’t own a gun, having a gun. To have reform that says someone who’s been institutionalized for more than two weeks, is prescribed anti-psychotic medication, etc shouldn’t own a gun isn’t a step towards fascism and complete government control of personal lives. Adam Lanza, James Holmes, Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris, Dylan Roof; all names of men who have had possession of guns and shouldn’t have.
If we want people to be happy–a collective happy–we need to come together. A total gun ban will never work, for multiple reasons which I already laid out, but we can certainly not carry on at the same pace. Help out the people who need help. Don’t just use their problems as excuses.
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