SMOKIN’ THE NRA’S WEED

Just a comment...

A DECADE OR SO BACK, a couple of high school kids in Colorado, because they’d been bullied, entered their high school and began firing. I personally know a counselor who sat with one parent through the ordeal of linking each locked-down student with each student’s parent or guardian. “It will be all right,” the counselor told the mom. “It will be all right.” When all was said and done that day, it wasn’t all right for about a dozen parents. The mom was one of them.

A month ago, a Congresswoman was shot through the head and six of her constituents murdered as she conducted the most democratic of all practices in this republic: conversing with her public.

Then yesterday, a person whom I consider a colleague, although I never had the opportunity to work with him, was gunned down in the office of the Placerville area school where he served as a principal.

In response to these incidents, those who believe that guns are too readily available rally to restrict our access to weaponry. Those who oppose gun controls spout about “our freedoms” and “our second amendment rights.”


THE CHURCH OF THE OPEN ROAD respectfully screams: “Wait a minute!”  To those wishing to disarm the country, you have to be smart enough to realize that in a free society, we can’t outlaw much of anything. That’s why we will never win the war on drugs. That’s why there’ll always be prostitutes in the vicinity of cheap motels. That’s why declaring abortion illegal will be an act of futility. None of these things will go away. Neither will guns.


HOWEVER:  To the South Dakota legislator who writes a bill requiring all citizens over the age of 21 to own a fire arm the Church would suggest: this canard comparing forcible gun ownership to the recent requirement that folks obtain health insurance is simply stupid to the point of being dangerous. Not everybody needs a gun. But everybody gets ill or suffers physical injury from time to time. If you want to repair the health legislation, propose something.

To the southern California Republican who stated that the primary reason for the second amendment is to allow the people to protect themselves from their government, understand that as their elected representative YOU are charged with protecting the people from their government. If you don’t understand that, please step down.

To those who would suggest that if a citizen with a gun in Tucson or in Placerville had been on the scene the outcome might have been much different, I must say I agree. There would have been much more injury and much more death – not less. And when the police arrived, whom might they choose to take out?


THE FULL TEXT OF THE SECOND AMENDMENT begins with the clause: “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State…”

The boys in Colorado, the young man in Arizona and the assailant in Placerville have yet to be linked to a well-regulated militia of any sort. So how do we justify their gun ownership?

“Why, to protect myself from the tyranny of my government!” according to the NRA.

Paranoia is “a chronic psychosis characterized by systemized delusions of persecution.” We are told that frequent users of marijuana suffer from such delusions. The “protecting myself from the tyranny of my government” rant is textbook paranoia.

We are blessed with the most stable democracy the world has ever seen whether or not you or I are particularly enamored with whoever happens to hold the highest office. We don’t need protection from our government. But, apparently, Gabby Giffords needed protection from “us.”


IT IS TIME FOR THE AMERICAN PUBLIC TO QUIT SMOKING THE NRA’S WEED and to have an honest national discussion about firearms, their place in our society and the juxtaposition of a national right to bear arms against many innocent individuals’ right to life itself.