Under the Gun

In the Bill of Rights, the Second Amendment to the Constitution reads:

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.

I was scanning newspaper web sites on my laptop last night while Anita and the kids watched a movie and I read that U.S. Representative Gabrielle Giffords – the congresswoman who was shot in the head by a 22-year-old freak named Jared Lee Loughner at a constituent event in Casas Adobes, Arizona, on January 8, 2011 – served Thanksgiving dinner to troops at the Davis-Monthan Air Force Base in Tucson on Thursday.

To put it simply, I couldn’t frikkin’ believe it.

Loughner had used a Glock 9mm semi-automatic pistol with a 33-round magazine to shoot Representative Giffords and 18 others outside of a Safeway in the Tucson suburb. Six people died, including nine-year-old Christina-Taylor Green, who had accompanied a neighbor to the event to “learn more about politics.”

The lesson is this: as long as powerful special interests like the National Rifle Association are buying congressmen and calling the shots, to pardon the pun, in Washington and anyone can purchase deadly weapons from places like the Sportsman's Warehouse in Tucson, where Loughner snagged his piece, no one is truly safe in this country – not even at suburban grocery stores on Saturday mornings.

Interestingly, Giffords was a gun rights supporter although the NRA still gave her a D+ rating, presumably because she’s a Democrat.

She continues to recover from the critical injuries she suffered that day, undergoing rigorous physical, occupational and speech therapy and astounding observers. Given that her miraculous recovery – and it’s just that: miraculous – means one less person has died at the hands of a gun-toting loser who hid behind the Second Amendment, the NRA ought to raise her rating and maybe buy her a new car or something to boot.

Then I came across an article pointing out that the GOP presidential contenders are all touting their support of the Second Amendment – Perry and Santorum have been interviewed while pheasant hunting, Gingrich and Cain have spoken at NRA conventions and Romney, after backing gun control measures in Massachusetts, now presents himself as a strong Second Amendment supporter – while President Obama’s been virtually silent on the issue.

From the article:

Obama's support of strict gun control measures before becoming president makes it difficult for him to claim he's a Second Amendment champion, even though he signed a bill allowing people to take loaded guns into national parks. But he's apparently decided that his record backing gun safety is nothing to boast of, perhaps because of the power of the gun lobby and its opposition to anything smacking of gun control.

Yes, the gun lobby is powerful. But roughly 67 percent of the 16,272 murders committed in the United States in 2008 were committed with firearms, or about 10,886. That’s a lot of pain and suffering and loss and broken families. If Republicans want to pander to the NRA nuts, Obama should pander to gun control proponents.

Mr. President, you can’t have it both ways. You’re no Mitt Romney.

Do it for Christina-Taylor Green.

Christina Taylor-Green

Sources: Detroit News, Los Angeles Times, Justfacts.com, Daily Mail, ABC News.