My dad taught me that tools are designed with a purpose. To do a job well I should have a tool box full of instruments. He also taught me that I should protect my tools, not abuse them, a tool that is lost or damaged might not be able to do the work at a time when I most need it… My dad has a collection of old tools that he has cared for and some he has passed on to another generation, some came from my grandparents. I hope to pass some of these on to my children and grandchildren.
All that can and should be said about the recent school shootings in Connecticut has been said or written by better, more talented, and smarter authors than me, but I took my 4 year old grandson to school this week, and walked down the hall escorting him to class. The hall was full of preschooler excitement and laughter as they are finishing the week that ends with the beginning of Christmas break. Truthfully in that moment of walking my grandson down a noise filled hall, I felt a heaviness for the parents, grandparents, and families who suffered unimaginable loss. I also realized how easy it would be for the same type of horrific event to occur in our peaceful community.
The liberals in their compassion for the children cry for gun control, many conservatives seem to bend under the weight of such a tragedy acknowledging that some limited form of gun control may be needed, the ultra conservative voice shouts that guns in the hands of citizens keep us safer and they try to prove that with what some claim as fuzzy math and others might call lies and distortions about reduced crime. We all want an answer, we all want to stop such evil. It is in moments of helplessness we need to be most careful.
I wonder if any of our bright founding fathers dreamed of a weapon, that could fire hundreds of rounds of bullets per minute. These guys had single shot pistols, and rifles that took precious time to use. Powder, tap it down, set in cloth and ball, tap it down, cock the gun, aim, pull the trigger, hope the flint worked, repeat. Yes they had some cannons but those worked much the same way. Killing an enemy was not an easy task. Killing 26 in minutes would have been unimaginable.
Did Benjamin Franklin ever imagine a dark movie theatre crowded with hundreds of unprotected citizens? Did Thomas Jefferson think that some day we would have shopping malls where thousands of Americans would gather and that they would need protection from a gunman? Did any one of the original supporters of our second amendment giving us a right to “bear arms”,that we are currently quarreling over, have nightmares of crazy people, with sophisticated weapons, charging into a school with a determination to kill as many children as possible? I doubt it. This is where those that want us to surrender our weapons have it right.. They say people and society have changed, circumstances are different today.
This is a dangerous argument, unless you really understand our second amendment right.
Our right to bear arms was not given to us to protect our property from robbers, it was not given to us to protect our children from the mentally unstable, it was not given so we could hunt, or target practice. The right to bear arms was given to protect citizens from tyrants, from governments that would take our rights from us. What guarantees your right to vote, your right to own property, your right to worship, what keeps the government from seizing all you have, you say the constitution. That constitution is protected by what? The constitution is protected by the people, not armies ordered by a government. Guns are the ultimate tool in the hands of ordinary citizens to be used for the purpose of protecting and securing our constitutional rights
Our founding fathers may have never dreamed of a day when a young man would senselessly take the lives of so many children, but they could imagine governments so evil that the citizens needed some tools. These men of the late 1700’s gave us the right to assemble in protest against our government, they gave us the freedom to write news stories informing the citizens as to what the government was doing, they saw a need to protect people the government might arrest and so it granted the accused particular rights. They had experienced tyrants that persecuted people because of what church they attended so they granted us freedom of religion and yes they knew governments so evil that in order to protect this nation they said there may come a time when people may have to take up arms so they prevented that government from taking the people’s weapons.
Let us protect the children, make it impossible for someone to enter a school bent on harming them, steel doors, that can only be opened from the inside for each room, single entrance for visitors with armed guard if necessary. But, let us also be very diligent and certain we protect their liberty, that we hand them a country that could never be ruled by tyrants, and let us leave them all the tools they might need to do that job.
David
You got it right son!!! Dad