Hiroshima: Second Amendment Right?
I’m watching CNN’s discussion of guns after the latest school shooting du jour. Yawn! Same old boring arguments, thoughts and prayers, second amendment, etc. But there’s one argument I’m not hearing: whether I have the right to bear nuclear arms. The same argument that people use to justify AR-15s should apply to atomic bombs.
So if I have the right to open-carry an AR-15 into a schoolroom, according to the second amendment’s “right to bear arms”, don’t I equally have the right to bring nuclear arms like an A-bomb into a schoolroom? After all “A-bombs don’t kill people, people kill people.” I could blow up an entire city with a million people with an A-bomb, and the gun-rights advocates would just chalk that up to collateral damage, as the right to carry nuclear ‘arms’ must remain sacrosanct. We might even hear clichés like, “We need more good guys with A-bombs.”
No, really, I think that the A-bomb example shows that the second amendment doesn’t actually authorize ALL arms. But then, where do you draw the line? At least one can claim that AR-15s are not automatically covered by the second amendment. The second amendment is just a red herring, designed to distract from whatever the real argument is about.
Don’t forget that assault rifles were once banned (and, btw, deaths went down), and the courts didn’t try to step in with the second amendment. So now, if you want to keep AR-15s legal, you can’t fall back on the second amendment. You must now argue that open carry of AR-15s is a somehow a good thing.
Also, don’t forget that Congress banned lawn darts — LAWN DARTS! — as too dangerous and not protected by the second amendment. Thus, Congress could ban AR-15s as too dangerous, but apparently danger is not the issue for AR-15s. So maybe A-bombs should be permitted as well, no matter how dangerous they are.
So if the second amendment is a red herring, and if the danger element is not an issue, just what IS the issue?