The 2nd Amendment and other messy things

The last thing you need to read is another blog about the 2nd Amendment. There are plenty of others out there writing about the history of, the reasons for, the importance of, the reasons against...that 2nd entry in our Bill of Rights.

Here's a news flash. Many people are of the opinion that personal protection is a fundamental right. They also believe that protecting their home and property is equally fundamental. The reality is that there are bad guys (this is a gender neutral description) out there that want to break in, to rob, and/or to do harm or kill. It happens. Every single day. I have a primal instinct to protect myself and my family. I cannot adequately do that with a broom handle, baseball bat or 7 iron behind my bedroom door.

Here's a dilemma. In order to make firearms available to law-abiding citizens for protection, for hunting, for shooting competition and other sporting uses, those same firearms can and do end up in the hands of people that will do harm to innocent people. Freedoms can have that kind of outcome.

In America, we also have the First Amendment which provides some very important rights including the right to freely exercise our religion, to freely express ourselves, and to peaceably assemble. But even these rights can get messy. Sometimes the way others use these rights can be hateful, offensive, hurtful, divisive, controversial, appalling and inconvenient. But that is no reason to abridge those rights. Some think we should make some of these activities illegal. I strongly disagree.

There are many people that are very uncomfortable with all these rights. I think it is because it requires people to take some personal responsibility for their choices and actions. It is much easier to just let someone else tell us what to do, tell us what is allowed, take the responsibility (and the right) out of our hands.

When our kids were young, we looked into the idea of homeschooling them (which we ultimately did.) Admittedly, we had a little difficulty grasping the concept that we were allowed to take on this task and responsibility. Is this even legal we asked? See, we had been so conditioned that we did not have some basic rights...that those rights had been totally turned over to "the state" that we felt like we were doing something wrong. In retrospect, we saw that raising our children was OUR responsibility...and that included deciding how they would be educated. Fear not to all those that want to protect us and our children from ourselves...the state of Georgia still maintains some basic oversight. I had no problem with that basic oversight.

I also have no problem with there being some reasonable limitations on the use of and ownership of weapons. I don't think I want my neighbor owning and using rocket propelled grenades or true military hardware. But let's make sure we don't try to confuse the issue with a false and misleading glossary of firearm terms. For example, the 15 round clip in my Glock 19 9mm is not a high-capacity magazine but some would like to outlaw it.

Human violence is a terrible thing and has been around since Adam and Eve's son killed his own brother. If we are going to try to reduce the amount of violence (and who would ever disagree with that goal) maybe it would make better sense to address the causes of this human condition. But...that requires looking at the hard things... acknowledging politically incorrect things... making the difficult decisions... addressing what we know is wrong with all of us.