Thursday, June 26, 2008

America the Illiterate

I shouldn’t be surprised. I shouldn’t be at all surprised. I don’t know why I am. Americans in general, and the Supreme Court in specific have shown an amazing dearth of reading for comprehension skills where many issues are concerned. Where this specific area of the Constitution is concerned, they’ve demonstrated time and again that it may as well have been scribbled in crayon on a bathroom wall in pidgin Swahili. They comprehend it as well as if it had been.

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.”

Guess which bit of the above is rarely mentioned, and even more rarely understood, especially by the highest court in the land, apparently?

If you guessed the bit that clearly indicates that the right to keep and bear arms is not, in fact, constitutionally mandated on an individual level, you get a shiny new puppy. It is beyond my understanding how so many people can consistently fail to comprehend a sentence that is, frankly, just not that complex.

Let me lay it this out as simply as I can (although I’ll state again that I feel the original wording is pretty goddamned easy to understand). Listen, people. Listen reeeeeaaaaaaal close. I’ll try not to stutter.

The right for a well regulated militia, necessary for the security of a free state, just does NOT MEAN that you have a constitutional right to stock a handgun in every room of your suburban split level, your slum apartment, or your rusty trailer. It couldn’t be clearer or more simple.

I guess what I’m saying is that the whole “constitutional freedom” argument can kiss my ass. I’m getting ready to mail packages containing smart food and Hooked on Phonics to every single Supreme Court Justice as we speak. So let’s move on.

Next, I’d just like to point out that the Constitution was adopted in 1787. We’ve made an amendment or two to it since then. Why? Um, how about because we know a few things then that we might not have been able to forsee then. I’m not advocating riding roughshod over the Constitution. Far from it. I’m just pointing out that on even if it did guarantee the right of the individual to bear and keep arms, (which it patently doesn’t. Please don’t forget that simplest of facts) it would still be possible that given the knowledge we have now*, it wouldn’t be unprecedented for us to make a tweak or two.

But hey, you know what? I should calm down. What am I even so worked up about? It’s not as though there’s a gun violence problem in D.C. Or, for that matter, the entire country. Yeah. It’s not at all as though people are dying in increasing numbers as a result of gun violence, and it’s totally not as though this idiotic Supreme Court decision has completely kneecapped the gun control movement.

I am so fucking out of this country as soon as humanly possible. Until then, I’m on the internet, pricing bulletproof outfits for every occasion.

*Namely, that giving people guns? Considerably ups the probability that people will shoot someone with a gun. Cause rumor has it, it’s a touch harder to shoot someone when you haven’t a gun.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

No guns, no funs.