Editor:
It is getting real tiring to hear these self-professed constitutional experts whine about any refinement to the second amendment as letting the forces of tyranny loose in America. Chances none of these clowns from the NRA’s greatest show on earth has ever lived in a ghetto. But like P.T. Barnum said, there is a fool born every second.
What the conversation, or rant, misses is that the Constitution is an amendable instrument meant to keep up with real-world concerns about the preservation of freedom for everyone. Not just those gun-loving good old boys who are too self-absorbed to notice they’ve become simply a mouthpiece for the gun manufactures’ advertising wing, the NRA, while they’ve let a tyrant take everyone of their other constitutional guaranteed rights away via the Patriot Act.
Tell me, what defense will your guns be if push comes to shove, when a tyrant already transcends all jurisdiction by routinely conducting preemptive assassinations via drones simply to by-pass the time consuming task of respecting the rights enumerated by a the Constitution they’re pretending to defend.
You will be put to rest before you even begin to consider to take up arms, acting on the rhetorical justification for playing with your toys. But of course you’d all have proven that when the Constitution is threatened you fold up like lawn chairs in winter and let the government do whatever they desire to curb everyone else’s rights — such as torture, detention without due process, and the many other bastardizations of the founding father’s intent — as long as they don’t disturb the shackles of your vaunted right to own guns.
It is time to remember (and thereby act) that individual rights are only rights if they do not infringe on the rights of others. It is time for some sanity in this insane world of “me me me!” and “my rights.” Economically we are now a nation without borders so will we treat our fellow human beings with God-given grace or allow them to remain cannon fonder for the military industrial complex bottom line.
Eric Olander
Glenwood Springs