President Obama and Mexican President Calderon held a joint press conference where they congratulated each other on random insignificant non-achievements and then went their separate ways to do whatever it is these men do.
By diplomatic standards the press conference was a complete success, because it was utterly useless. Neither leader succeeded in saying or doing anything to end the world.
Yet an event of virtually total fluff featured one serious moment when a Mexican reporter did what American reporters refuse to do. The fellow asked a serious question. He wanted to know if President Obama could just veto the Second Amendment. Unlike American liberals who just deliberately ignore our founding document, this reporter was asking an earnest question of a foreign leader.
While Mr. Obama is far from the constitutional scholar that he claims to be, he does know how to play one for the camera when electoral votes are at stake. He explained that the Second Amendment giving private citizens the right to own guns is part of America and the law of the land.
What Mr. Obama could have said is why the Second Amendment is so important. Without it, there is no First Amendment.
Look at Libya right now. Moammar Khadafi is using his army to shoot innocent citizens on sight. He is judge, jury, and sadly enough, an out of control executioner. While the United Nations and Mr. Obama debate meaningless non-binding resolutions, sanctions, and other useless measures, Mr. Khadafi communicates with bullets. The citizens have nothing to fire back with, so their solution is to die in the vain hope that American leaders will care.
American elites will smugly point out that America is different from Libya, and that our “civilized” culture renders guns unnecessary. After all, we have checks and balances. These liberals fail to grasp that the reverse is true. The right to own guns is a check and a balance. It is the very right to own guns which keeps us civilized.
Picture a world that makes “Lord of the Flies” look peaceful. Picture savage animals running around committing rampant crime just because they can. Picture lawlessness and tyranny where a precious few get to dictate life to the long suffering masses.
Some may see this as Libya 2011. Try downtown Los Angeles in 1992.
A jury rendered a verdict in a criminal trial that many liberals disagreed with. Since the left disagreed with the law, they simply decided that the ruling was invalid and needed to be overturned. As the left always does, they resorted to violence long before anybody could find Wisconsin on a map.
The leftist mob (Be honest and admit that it was not Republicans in red and blue diagonal neckties rioting.) burned the city of Los Angeles.
I was in a safe neighborhood in Bel Air across the street from seven million dollar homes. Those homeowners did not call the police. They called the mayor, the governor, and in some cases, the president. Private security with orders to shoot to kill made sure that the mob was not going to throw so much as one match on their property.
Those not in the wealthy areas either had their own protection or were out of luck. Some Korean grocery store owners managed to save their stores by explaining to the mob the one entity that renders a language barrier moot. The mob saw the guns and retreated.
Yet the most telling tale was when the mob tried to burn down an old age home. A pair of teenage soldiers with semi-automatic weapons kept the mob at bay. Elderly people in wheelchairs would have choked to death from smoke inhalation. They were spared death by young men who knew right from wrong and had the ability to enforce it.
Leftists will in some cases still condescendingly point out that the Los Angeles riots were an aberration. It is not every day life. As somebody who has been downtown more than once, this point is debatable. Yet even if it is accepted as truth, those very special situations are exactly why the Second Amendment is justified.
People like Khadafi, Saddam Hussein, and other terrorists do not need to abuse their power daily. They only need to do so with quality, not quantity. Places where guns are restricted to police officers, judges, and other government officials are potential war zones. Places where citizens can own firearms are peace zones.
Several years ago homicide statistics were compared nationally. North Dakota and Washington, DC, had the same number of people. That year DC had 489 homicides. North Dakota had nine. DC had an outright ban on guns in a city filled with liberals. North Dakota had respect for guns and the rule of law. North Dakota had conservative Republicans.
So with all due respect to the Mexican people, they may wish to emulate our attitude about guns rather than lecture us to emulate their failed approach to crime.
With all due to respect to the Mexican leader who has the same surname as the drug lord on Miami Vice, Americans do not need a lecture on gun violence from Mexico.
What Americans and the world needs is less dictatorship and more liberty and democracy. The First Amendment is the heart of our nation. The Second Amendment protects that heart. A (potential) flow of bullets pumped into a bad guy trying to harm an innocent person is just as vital as the flow of oxygen to the brain and blood to the heart. Protected we live. Unprotected we become morgue numbers bagged and tagged, whether the cemetery be located in Tripoli or downtown Los Angeles.
eric
“What Mr. Obama could have said is why the Second Amendment is so important. Without it, there is no First Amendment.”
That’s an often heard claim. Really, the First Amendment came first for a reason. Without it the Constitution would never have ratified in the first place.
When you read the Second Amendment, it simply 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.”
If you know a little about American history, then you know that the Founders believed in stringently limited police and military estates, a quaint anachronism to neoconservatives like our good host.
Our Founders envisaged a people who were the military, were the police. They understood that the citizen was the militia but the militia was not the citizen. The Militia was the armed citizen.
They also understood that the militia must be well-regulated.
Unfortunately, it was just poorly worded. They took the meaning for granted, never imagining people would be as selective with it as they are today.
The context of the Second Amendment, and meaning of the words, should be clear to anyone who knows anything about the early history of the United States, and how that Amendment was always interpreted until only very, very recently.
As for this cute little snarky analogy… We are not – nor ever have been – anything like Libya. It’s a non sequitur.
JMJ
Jersey;
“Unfortunately, it was just poorly worded. ”
oh, so know you’re going to re-word the constitution ?
Maybe “selective” in your interpretation ?
pffft
The individual can own a gun and not have to be a part of any collective, militia or otherwise
It was poorly worded, Micky, and even the Framers thought so. It was a political calculation. It is unfortunate that too many modern Americans don’t know that.
JMJ
“t is unfortunate that too many modern Americans don’t know that.”
Yeah, I get it.
I got it freaking years ago when you first opened your yap.
Everyones an idjut except for you.
Typical moonbat.
If its not PC and attacking every form of communication there is they also wanna re-word the constitution to suit their agenda.
The second protects our first, like it or not.
The minute were not allowed to speak freely is when we take arms against the tyranny imposing the gag.
Whats so hard about you understanding that ?
I’m sorry I asked
The second allows the militia but also allows the collective to establish that militia if needed by a group of individuals.
There is no militiacollective without first having the individual.
In the case of tyranny are we to look to the same institution imposing that tyranny to arm us so we can wage revolution against them ?
Hardly.
Each American should be allowed to posses firearms individually.
In case of tyranny we band together and organize with our independently owned arms.
United we stand, divided we fall.
“Oooh, I studied history so I’m smarter.
Yeah, great.
The SS/Nazis studied history only so they could re-write it in order to give Aryan credit to everything created in the course of humanity
Just like the supposed science behind global warming.
Non of your historical knowledge matters once its subjected to idealistic concepts and agendas.
“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.”
The context of the Second Amendment, and meaning of the words, should be clear to anyone who knows anything about the early history of the United States.. OK, so what does a well-regulated militia mean? And what does the “security of a free State” mean? The simple interpretation for me is that our Founding Fathers wanted the citizens, as a whole, to be able to protect themselves from enemies – foreign and domestic, to include an overly demanding government and/or an imposing Army. I suppose an argument could be made that the original description of the militia is what became the National Guard, but because the individual state “armies” of National Guard have also evolved and are funded almost solely by the federal government, AND they are now part of the operational force rather than the earlier strategic reserve, that argument no longer holds water either. The individual citizen is, indeed, part of the militia…a group of any number of legal, law-abiding citizens. “Well-regulated” simply means keeping paramilitary groups under check.
I can’t understand how anyone with one iota of logic could argue against individual gun ownership. As evidenced by every statistic from every survey ever conducted, the stricter the gun laws in an area, the higher the risk of getting shot… It’s like saying Global Warming is causing all the recent snowstorms…
“It’s like saying Global Warming is causing all the recent snowstorms…”
The sad thing is that some idiots actually buy that crap, along with allowing private gun ownership but want bullets to cost a thousand bucks each while paying “necessarily” high prices for oil