Sidney, I think you have your history a little mixed up. It is true that there was a revolt against paying taxes to the English, but as I understand it the primary objection was taxation without representation, not the idea of taxation per se.
The second amendment is CLEARLY about a well-organized militia to protect a very small and new federation of states against invasion from without. As we discussed before, there have been no high court rulings EVER acknowledging that the amendment gives individuals the right to bear arms.
I would feel pretty safe if we were all armed with revolutionary war era muskets, which were hard to load, inaccurate, etc. Our forefathers could not foresee criminals more heavily armed than the police, people in families shooting each other in crimes of passion that would not have been fatal without lethal weapons, the massacre of brown children in the urban streets, high schoolers gunning each other down in high schools, or any of the other things that are going wrong now.
They were very smart men, and it is hard to imagine them thinking that this is any good way to live. That is why most of the other western democracies have much more stringent rules against guns. Just like antiquated parts of our constitution and bill of rights that allowed only free property owners to vote, our national laws need to be a living document which changes as the times and circumstances do, in my opinion.
Is there some real reason why people need to buy more than one hand gun per month? Or that dealers at gun shows shouldn't run the same kind of background checks as gun stores do? Or that armor-piercing bullets should be legal? None of these things really make sense, but they make tons of money for the NRA and gun and ammunition manufacturers, who are major lobbyists who have managed to pretty much buy off our legislators. I think the whole thing is absolutely pathetic.
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