Why Gun Control Has Nothing to Do With the 2nd Amendment.

by Staff October 29, 2012 31 Comments News Opinion Sista Talk Weekly Columns

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(ThyBlackMan.com) The Second Amendment clearly states that citizens of the United States have the right to “keep and bear arms” for “traditionally lawful purposes.” But while the objective of the Second Amendment is noble, this right, as evident in the many cases of murder in both the country’s urban and rural areas, can become abused especially by reckless individuals (and even the mentally unstable).

Just recently, two mass shooting incidents shocked the nation and drew in sympathy from many countries around the world. Whether these shooting incidents can be classified as hate crimes, or that they have other inexplicable reasons, the fact remains that a number of innocent people were brutally killed because of the irresponsible usage of firearms.

Because of this, concerned and law abiding citizens and lawmakers are constantly debating on an antique topic on whether the public should be allowed to carry guns or not. People who don’t support the idea of gun regulations say that these measures are a blatant violation of every American’s constitutional rights. Proponents of this idea, on the other hand, argue that the basic idea of gun control laws is plain and simple, and that is responsible firearm ownership.

Illinois (Chicago) is one of the several states that started implementing gun control restrictions since the 70s. But because these laws are against the Second Amendment, the state has constantly run into legal challenges for these restrictions. And oftentimes, these laws have been overturned and abolished. For instance, sometime in 2010, the Supreme Court overturned the state’s handgun ban because it was deemed illegal and unconstitutional.

But while it’s true that the Second Amendment can just powerfully wipe off all gun control laws in the country, people opposing these laws are missing the point. These gun laws are not an attack on the Second Amendment. They are so much more because gun laws are about regulating the use of firearms in all parts of the country for the sake of public safety. When we say “regulating,” it can have a variety of meanings.

For instance, before a person is allowed to purchase a gun, part of the gun control legislation may require that person to undergo proper training. People can lose control of themselves and may resort to a destructive nature especially when overcome with an intense feeling of anger and frustration. So to make sure that irresponsible usage of firearms is prevented, proper training on the handling and usage of guns cannot be overly emphasized.

In addition to that, present gun control laws are meant to make sure that everyone obtains their firearms legally. Notwithstanding the continuous threat of terrorism, gang crimes, threat of unstable persons acquisition etc.; it pays to have a system intended to correct any unauthorized dealings and usage of firearms. The Nation Rifle Association would probably not agree that illegal guns are part of the problem in modern society and until we come to grips with that fact we will never get a handle on it.

Staff Writer; Stanley G. Buford

Feel free to connect with this brother via Twitter; Stanley G. and also facebook http://www.facebook.com/sgbuford.

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Jason says:
November 6, 2012 at 11:41 am
You do realize that gun control laws in this country were created to keep guns out of the hands of recently freed slaves?
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Ford says:
November 1, 2012 at 11:51 pm
…..Youtube. Gun confiscation as Katrina was going down. Could be you or me for any reason.
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DT says:
November 1, 2012 at 1:44 pm
This article is bad and you should feel bad
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Jim says:
October 31, 2012 at 10:37 am
There are so many things wrong with your logic in this article that it is impossible to label it as such.
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American Rifleman says:
October 31, 2012 at 8:51 am
“Traditionally lawful purposes” is not mentioned anywhere in the Second Amendment. Your statement is a complete falsehood. Did you think you could just make up “facts” and people wouldn’t notice?
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Tom Collins says:
October 31, 2012 at 8:47 am
Rubbish!
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E. Zach Lee-Wright says:
October 31, 2012 at 12:13 am
It is not the guns but the people that is a problem. Please note that in 2010 Washington DC had the most extreme gun control laws of all American cities. El Paso, Texas on the other hand was one of the least controlling. The two cities are about the same population and both consist of a minority majority. DC had twenty seven times more murders than El Paso, where every responsible adult citizen can legally carry a loaded, concealed handgun. Twenty seven times more murdering. If you cannot explain why the city with the most gun control had so many more murders, you have no business advocating for more gun control.
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PavePusher says:
October 31, 2012 at 12:03 am
“The Second Amendment clearly states that citizens of the United States have the right to “keep and bear arms” for “traditionally lawful purposes.” ”
Facsinating how you torpedoed your entire purpose with the falsehood of the very first sentence. one can only wonder if you are illiterate, or an idiot.
I’d say: “Yes.”
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Bdk says:
October 30, 2012 at 11:34 pm
This website is offensive and racist. Good thing your 1A rights aren’t regulated like this man is proposing our 2A should be. Disgusting.
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Chip says:
October 30, 2012 at 8:44 pm
OMG…you’re just about as stupid as they come. If you’re going to write I think you first need to do some research and make your article as grounded in truth as you possible can. Based upon your facts I’m going to assume that you really are just stupid.
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constitutional right says:
October 30, 2012 at 5:54 pm
12 Reasons You Should Own a Gun
1. Because You Own a Fire Extinguisher. Bad things happen. You can still call 911, but when seconds count, you need to act quickly to save your life and the life of those you love.
2. Because Shooting Is An Olympic Sport. Shooting is an Olympic sport and the United States holds more gold medals than any other nation.
3. Because Most Americans Own Guns. You’ll be in good company as a gun owner; nearly fifty percent of households in the U.S. own a firearm.
4. Because You Respect The U.S. Constitution. Sometimes you won’t like it when people exercise fundamental freedoms protected by the Constitution, such as freedom of speech. But that simply doesn’t matter: The Supreme Court ruled that every person has a constitutional right to own guns. So respecting the Constitution means respecting the right of others to exercise those constitutional rights.
5. Because You Are More Likely to Die By Falling. There were 613 fatal firearms accidents in 2007, one-half of one percent of all fatal accidents. You’re more likely to die by driving, poisoning, drowning or falling than by a gun accident.
6. Because Guns Stop Burglars. Last year, the CDC estimated that Americans used guns about 498,000 times to frighten away intruders attempting to break into homes.
7. Because Gun Control Increases Murder Rates. After D.C. banned handguns in 1984, the average murder rate jumped 73 percent while the U.S. murder rate fell 11 percent. Chicago has the country’s toughest gun laws and most violent crime.
8. Because Guns Don’t Cause Murder. A New York Times study of 1,662 murders in the city found that 90 percent of the killers had criminal records. Murderers are not ordinary, law abiding adults. Instead, virtually all murderers are extremely aberrant individuals with life histories of violence, psychopathology, and substance abuse.
9. Because Gun Owners Win Political Battles. Gun rights groups have donated $22 million in political campaigns over the last decade, while gun control groups gave $1.8 million.
10. Because Ignorance is Dangerous. At current homicide rates, 1 in 240 Americans will be murdered this year. You need to know how to operate a tool that will immediately stop a threat and save your life and the life of those in your household.
11. Because Guns Don’t Make Countries More Dangerous. Switzerland has one of the world’s highest gun ownership rates and also one of the lowest homicide rates. In contrast, the countries with the world’s worst homicide rates—South Africa, Columbia, Brazil, Mexico, Philippines, Taiwan—also prohibit law-abiding citizens from owning guns. Compare the 20 per 100,000 homicide rate in Russia, which bans guns, with the 2 per 100,000 rate in neighboring Poland. Compare gun-free Luxembourg’s 9 per 100,000 murder rate with Germany and France with rates of 0.93 and 1.65.
12. Because Gun Control Doesn’t Make You Safer. The U.S. National Academy of Sciences failed to identify even one gun control measure that had a statistically significant reduction in violent crime, suicide, or gun accidents. The Center for Disease Control reached the same conclusion in 2003.
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Willbill says:
October 30, 2012 at 5:50 pm
Citizens should not have to “Undergo proper training” in order to exercise their Constitutional rights to speech, practice a religion, be a journalist, petition the government, etc. and the same is the should be the case for our right to keep and BEAR arms.
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Pingback: The Worst Gun Control Editorial Ever Written. Probably. | The Truth About Guns
BHirsh says:
October 30, 2012 at 4:24 pm
Valerie, I’m witcha on the telephone typing. It sucks. [grin]
On to your other point: There are already laws prohibiting legal minors from purchasing firearms, and against the crimes that gang bangers commit daily. New laws that impede your and my right to own and carry the tools necessary to defend our safety are not only an illogical bad idea, they materially infringe a fundamental right that everyone has, be they black, white, yellow, red or otherwise. The Black community would do well to divorce itself from people like Emanuel, and the whole Democrat party in general, and start acting like responsible individuals instead of continuing to elect nanny-state plantation owners whose power and position depend on keeping Blacks from feeling like truly free, capable individuals.
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James A. Farmer says:
October 30, 2012 at 2:02 pm
Wrong! Gun control/civilian disarmament has everything to do with the
Second Amendment. Not only the Second Amendment, but human dignity,
civil rights, personal autonomy, women’s safety, security, and protection,
and the sanctity of life itself. Without getting angry, aggressive, and
hostile on this issue perhaps the moral high ground belongs to JPFO, Inc.
at http://www.jpfo.org. Their online video: “2A: Today” followed by “No Guns For
Negroes” and “No Guns For Jews” has much credible information for free
thinking citizens.
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BHirsh says:
October 30, 2012 at 1:17 pm
Au contraire, monsieur. Gun control DOES injure the 2nd Amendment. The government is prohibited from placing restrictions on fundamental rights, that materially attenuate their exercise. Attempting.g to redefine the issue away from this guaranteed protection does nothing to change that reality.
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Sfcmarkc says:
October 30, 2012 at 9:00 am
Sir,
Many have already spoken to the issue of the constitution so I won’t. Te point I want to make is that gun control laws which restrict the ownership of firearms by law abiding citizens simply yah sent worked. For proof I’d suggest you look at Chicago which has had more homicides than there have been American soldiers killed in Afghanistan. Trying the same solution and hoping for a different outcome doesn’t make sense.
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Richard Stocum says:
October 30, 2012 at 7:43 am
You are not a careful researcher sir. “Traditionally lawful purposes” is not a phrase mentioned anywhere in the 2nd amendment. It appears that you simply made that up. The 2nd amendment says that the “right to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed”. That is the operative phrase of the law, and there is no mention of a test of traditionally lawful purposes. I think that is your wishful liberal thinking intruding upon reality.
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Pingback: Gun sales, concealed permits on rise in Wyoming before general election – Casper Star-Tribune Online | BizLocal Wyoming
navdan says:
October 29, 2012 at 10:01 pm
@Tom,
I agree with your point in general, however I think there is an important distinction to be made:
“A well regulated militia is an army. The army is an arm of the government.”
While the militia (which, the unorganized militia per US Code is essentially all able-bodied citizens within certain ages) IS essentially an army, it is a non-standing army. But it is certainly NOT an arm of the government. The militia in concept is intended as the armed citizens of the country, and not the armed forces of the federal government.
That’s a very important distinction. The anti-gun (anti-self defense) crowd will often misconstrue the Second Amendment as only being applicable in the case of people as part of the military (often by stating that the modern day militia is really the National Guard, and thus the right to bear arms is only applicable via the channel of government-controlled service).
This is certainly untrue, and in my posts below I essentially make this case. Basically, it makes no sense that the authors of the Constitution, who had just spent long, brutal years fighting against government-controlled tyranny, would suggest that the only legitimate way a citizen would be able to maintain the right to bear arms is through the vehicle of a government military.
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Tom says:
October 29, 2012 at 9:57 pm
1 more point, remember Mayor Emanuel stated that they murder problem under control. They do the gold coast is controlled the only place that murders seem to be on the rise is on the west side and south side. Butthat seems to be ok with Rahm.
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Tom says:
October 29, 2012 at 9:47 pm
A well regulated militia is an army. The army is an arm of the government. The right of ghe people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed. The people are to have the means to defend themselves and their families, not only from criminals, but from the possibility of an oppressive government. Our founding fathers believed this included every weapom of a soldier.
The first gun control laws WERE designed to keep freed slaves under the thumb of the ruling class, whites. The KKK did want blacks to be weak. Black laws were designed to put freed blacks back into bondage. Modern white supremacists, like the Chicago government want blacks to be kept in check. The US government is through many laws creating a permenant underclass of not only blacks but of whites in depressed areas of the country and of latinos that are not able to gain citizenship.
The right of inner city blacks, whites, hispamics and other minorities is infringed to the point that these law abiding citizens havn’t the ability to protect themselves against the thugs and hoodlums that refuse to obey the law.
The inner city is the killing field of the oppressive government allowing those IT sees as the most expendable of IT’S population.
You in the inner cities deserve the same right to self protection as anyone on a gated community. Your lives are no less percious in the sight of God.
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Dawn Berkley says:
October 29, 2012 at 8:36 pm
This is one of the most poorly written articles I’ve ever read. Why on earth Google linked to this childish drivel is beyond me. The author needs to go to school before writing grownup subjects like the 2nd amendment.
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navdan says:
October 29, 2012 at 8:35 pm
Here’s a thought:
– The Constitution was written to specifically limit the small number of enumerated powers the federal government possesses over states and individuals.
– The Bill of Rights was written to further codify PRE-EXISTING RIGHTS and specific items that the federal government was NOT ALLOWED to tamper with
– The Bill of Rights was created to protect individual rights in almost every single amendment (protecting state rights in the others), and it would be nonsensical to interpret any amendment as allowing further power over people by the federal government
– The Second Amendment’s purpose is to ensure citizens can always prevent a tyrannical federal government from committing authoritarian abuses
– The right to self-defense is a fundamental natural right that every living being possesses by the fact that it exists (as opposed to the many “rights” people like to claim)
– That the right to self-defense is inalienable, and the Second Amendment exists to reinforce that right in the context of protection against an abusive government, every type of weapon that a modern military possesses that can sufficiently discriminate between aggressor and innocent in its use (i.e., NOT bombs, etc.) should absolutely be permitted to be owned by a law-abiding citizen
– That the natural right to self-defense is only justified when one person doesn’t harm another innocent person, the only reason to prohibit a citizen from owning any type of arms occurs when that person undermines another’s inalienable right to life by his own misuse of those arms
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navdan says:
October 29, 2012 at 8:20 pm
Seriously…within the first sentence of an article about the Second Amendment, how do you explicitly misquote the relatively short amendment by adding in a phrase that exists nowhere in the Constitution?
It’s ironic that you specific cite Chicago as a reason FOR instituting more gun control. Chicago has some of the most draconian gun control laws in the COUNTRY — it’s very difficult to legally own a weapon, and there is no right to “bear” arms in the city by any normal, law-abiding citizen — and it’s perpetually got some of the highest crime rates in the country. (And by the way, it wasn’t the “state’s” handgun ban, it was the city’s).
And “regulating” does have a finite amount of meanings; however, “well-regulated” in the verbiage of the time the Constitution was written meant essentially “well-disciplined” — not “well-controlled by the type of government figures that the Constitution exists to reign in in the first place.” But, that’s probably a bit too much research, right?
You also later discuss that wonderful benefits involved to “correct any unauthorized dealings and usage of firearms.” I’m not sure what constitutes “unauthorized dealings and usages”, but the same federal government I’m sure you’d love to have absolute power over civilian ownership of arms is the same one that intentionally sponsored a program that forced American gun stores to sell rifles to Mexican drug gangs that ended up killing a U.S. border patrol agent — and then tried desperately and continually to cover it up (try looking up the Gunwalker Scandal). If THAT isn’t unauthorized usage, I don’t know what is. But, it certainly doesn’t make much sense to have the babysitter have complete control and make the rules for all us children if the babysitter doesn’t know how to behave itself, either.
Hold on…I’d love to keep making more actual well-researched and logical points to dispute the erroneous opinion piece here, but I have to go pick up the pieces of brain that just exploded out of my head at this nonsense…
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RetMSgt says:
October 29, 2012 at 6:50 pm
Does one need “training” in order to write or publish an srticle? Does one need “training” in order to worship as they please? These are fundamental, God-given rights that all of us have, regardless of gender or skin color. The right to self-defense is equally fundamental. Our author states that present gun control laws are meant to make sure that everyone obtains their firearms legally, yet we all know that the dregs of society (gang bangers, criminals, etc.) do not.
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Jeff Gallagher says:
October 29, 2012 at 6:11 pm
No, seriously. You don’t get to rewrite the 2nd Amendment. Or, did you just not bother to read it? I don’t disagree that some laws are necessary to protect purple from the unlawful use of weapons. But, the current slew of so-called gun control laws us nothing more than gun confiscation which is the goal of the government. They know as long as Americans own weapons, they remain free and but subjugated like the citizens of England and most other European countries.
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James says:
October 29, 2012 at 5:31 pm
So called gun control is an infringment on the right of the people to keep and bear arms, don’t try to say it is not. 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.
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montanalibertarian says:
October 29, 2012 at 3:32 pm
The first gun control laws were intended to disarm newly freed slaves after the civil war. The KKK preferred to deal with unarmed victims.
The surest way to subjugate a people is to assure they are defenseless when injustice is to be meted out.
I don’t trust any government to “regulate” how I can worship, what I can say, who I associate with, or what means I have to defend myself and my loved ones from attack.
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Valerie Johnson says:
October 29, 2012 at 3:06 pm
Oops excuse the written mistakes. :)) This phone typing is the worse sometimes.;)
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Valerie Johnson says:
October 29, 2012 at 3:02 pm
This is my view concerning gun control in the black community. Sure their are those who have no business having guns..too young .
.to hot headed..not responsible concerning other things in life..not legally obtained..into illegal activity..those would some thing that would warrant concern but when they go as far as making responsible adults its wrong to have a gun..its leaves some people second guessing their rights to protect themselves. It leaves so many people open to be weak against the bad elements that are bombarding our world. For example white supremacist own guns and please do tell who is it cocked locked and ready to kill. We have to be ready for whatever.
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