Your Thursday Molly Ivins Moment

[kpete]

Molly Ivins

March, 1993:
Taking A Stab At Our Infatuation With Guns
By Molly Ivins
Creators Syndicate, Inc.
AUSTIN - Guns. Everywhere guns.

............

There is more hooey spread about the Second Amendment. It says quite clearly that guns are for those who form part of a well-regulated militia, i.e., the armed forces including the National Guard. The reasons for keeping them away from everyone else get clearer by the day. […]

The comparison most often used is that of the automobile, another lethal object that is regularly used to wreak great carnage. Obviously, this society is full of people who haven't got enough common sense to use an automobile properly. But we haven't outlawed cars yet. We do, however, license them and their owners, restrict their use to presumably sane and sober adults and keep track of who sells them to whom. At a minimum, we should do the same with guns.

In truth, there is no rational argument for guns in this society. This is no longer a frontier nation in which people hunt their own food. It is a crowded, overwhelmingly urban country in which letting people have access to guns is a continuing disaster. Those who want guns---whether for target shooting, hunting or potting rattlesnakes (get a hoe)---should be subject to the same restrictions placed on gun owners in England---a nation in which liberty has survived nicely without an armed populace. [...]

Michael Crichton makes an interesting argument about technology in his thriller "Jurassic Park." He points out that power without discipline is making this society into a wreckage. By the time someone who studies the martial arts becomes a master---literally able to kill with bare hands---that person has also undergone years of training and discipline. But any fool can pick up a gun and kill with it.

"A well-regulated militia" surely implies both long training and long discipline. That is the least, the very least, that should be required of those who are permitted to have guns, because a gun is literally the power to kill. For years, I used to enjoy taunting my gun-nut friends about their psycho-sexual hang-ups---always in a spirit of good cheer, you understand. But letting the noisy minority in the National Rifle Association force us to allow this carnage to continue is just plain insane.

http://community.seattletimes.nwsource.com/archive/?date=19930315&slug=1690536http://www.dailykos.com/stories/2016/6/16/1538947/-Cheers-and-Jeers-Thursday

[spooky3]

1. Brilliant. Provides even more reasons why we need

Supreme Ct changes and another case to enable them to overturn the prior 2nd amendment case.

[Moostache]

2. 23 years later...ZERO progress.

I am depressed and saddened.

Saddened to read the fabulous Ms. Ivins because I miss her tremendously.
Depressed because, let's face it, America's gun humpers have won.

23 years and no progress towards sanity?
It's actually worse because the only attempts to rein in the gun lobby - the assault weapons ban - has been lapsed and taken off the books. We have NEGATIVE progress in 23 years.

Sad.
Depressed.

Shitty ways to feel...

[PJMcK]

3. I loved Ms. Ivins' writing

Here's one of my favorite quotes:

"Next time I tell you someone from Texas should not be president of the United States, please pay attention."

[chknltl]

4. I agree with Molly but....

....I have a different interpretation of how and why 'well regulated militia' came into being.

I heard Thom Hartmann interview an author who explained how it was an addition to 2A inserted to bring slave states on-board with ratifying our Constitution.

Accdg. to that author, slave states had individual milita systems recruited to patrol and enforce regulations to keep individual slaves from arming themselves or worse unifying.

This interpretation of 'well regulated militia' fits because back then there were ongoing debates between slave states and non-slave states. The inclusion would have been considered a Constitutional proof to slave owners that their state's slave militias would continue on and also underlining for them that slavery in the southern states could not be abridged by the north.

I don't think this interpretation overly disagrees with Mollt Ivins but other than that, I am fully onboard with her in this piece.