The Second Amendment of the US Constitution says:
“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.”
My biggest problem is that people tend to read just the last part and ignore the first four words. In modern society our militia is the National Guard, they are todays equivalent of the minutemen of the American Revolution. The difference is that our National Guard has armories and storage depots where their arms are kept. The government supplies these weapons, in the old days our government couldn’t afford to equip an army, so it was necessary for militiamen to have their own guns, that just isn’t true today.
I don’t mean to take away from sportsmen and hunters. I know that shooting can be fun, and hunters provide a necessary role in the conservation of many species. I think the solution I have in mind would provide necessary restrictions and limits on gun ownership.
First, I would restrict gun ownership to people who have never committed a felony or spent any time in prison. I think that might already be the case but if it’s not it should be, I just can’t think of any good reason those people should be trusted with a gun. Second, (and I’m sure a lot more controversial) I would ban the sale and manufacture of semi-automatic weapons for any use that was not related to national defense. There is already a ban on fully automatic weapons and I think we as a nation should take the next step and ban semi-automatic weapons. After all, what benefit do they provide other than being able to quickly shoot at a target multiple times? How many times should you have to shoot at something if you want to hit it? I can guarantee with almost 100% certainty that if there was a ban on semi-automatic weapons the number of people who die from gun related crimes would drop by a lot. I think this ban should include all semi-automatic handguns as well as rifles. Third, it should be mandatory that all guns come equipped with child-safety locks. Seeing a story about how a kid gets a gun and an accident occurs even once is once too much, this one speaks for itself I think.
I’ll move on now to why the National Guard should not be sent overseas. As our nations militia they are needed for homeland security, it’s in their name… the NATIONAL Guard. It would also help a lot with disaster relief, that was made obvious during the recent hurricanes in the Gulf Coast. The National Guard was unable to help with rescue operations because it was deployed to Iraq. I wonder how many more lives could have been saved if they were in Louisiana and Mississippi, where they belong. It would also have gone a long way towards stopping the civil unrest that occurred after those disasters. The local police would have had more support and maybe not so much looting and violence would have happened. The National Guard should not be deployed overseas to beef up the number of troops we have on the ground. Do we deploy the Coast Guard to help out the Navy? If the regular Army does not have the amount of troops they need for an operation that is when the Army Reserve is called upon. I think if we still don’t have enough troops after doing that maybe we should rethink going to war in the first place.