I was at the neighborhood pharmacy today, waiting to pick up a prescription. There on the counter was a large index sized card covered in small type detailing precisely why, if I wanted to buy any product with pseudoephedrine or "ephedrine" in it (I specifically remember the quotation marks), I would have to leave my name, address, and other identifying information, which information would be entered into a database and made available to any number of people elsewhere in these United States, whether I liked it or not. It was that, or suffer with my sniffles and runny nose.
I reflected as I stood there that if I walked to the other end of this same shopping center I could walk into the sporting goods store and make off with all the ammunition my cash would allow me, and not leave so much as an initial with the cashier.
And this state of affairs is required by the 2nd Amendment? Is a fixed an unalterable point of our precious freedoms? Is the foundation and bedrock of our liberty and democracy and very existence as a nation?
How can that possibly be?
It is an artifact of the foolish writer of that amendment's attempt to be eloquent rather than clear and complete. If he'd used a straight forward construction that attached the militia with the right to bear arms, it would be a lot harder for the gun nuts to drop that condition and context.
ReplyDeleteIt won't be able to go on this way, forever. The situation is entirely out of hand with the gun industry appealing to the paranoia of the far right. And those guys aren't amassing the biggest arsenel the world has ever seen with no intention of using it. The tea party, Sarah Palin, Sharon Angle, etc. gave away that fact to anyone who denied that was the case.
They will have to be disarmed and, eventually, deNazified.
Well, as someone has asked, when did a "well-regulated militia" become any nut with a gun?
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