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Disease of Apprehension
Author: Raine    Date: 01/10/2013 14:13:30

This was written by a friend. He has given me permission to re-post his words here. They are his own, but I admit that I agree with the premise. I don't think I could say it much differently than he did, but it coincided with some research I have been doing with regards to the gun debate we are having in this country...


"I was watching the now infamous Alex Jones interview with Pierce Morgan the other night and it hit me - our gun problem isn't that we have guns ... it's that all the wrong people have guns. Hear me out on this. It's certainly a complex issue and I definitely understand searching every nook and cranny for an answer, but it's also more complex than just debating the Second Amendment.

As I watched Jones fanatically rail against the government and theorize about the most insane conspiracy theories, I realized that this man can legally own one gun or a hundred. That should give everyone pause and it certainly did me - but more importantly, it illustrated everything that is wrong with the gun culture in America today. So many of these individuals have a wanton lust of fear. It's always about fear with them. Fear of the government. Fear of their fellow man. Fear of the world. Fear of the end of times ... fear, fear, fear.

They fear everything around 'em and believe everything is a conspiracy. 9/11 was an inside job ... Obama is responsible for Sandy Hook ... the Oklahoma City bombing was entirely perpetrated by the government to cast blame on the militias.

The problem with this mindset is that it breeds not only fear, but also paranoia. So, you've got millions of Americans who fear everything around 'em to the point where they are unreasonably suspicious to an unhealthy degree.

Now on its own, it would seem less a problem and more a nuisance for the rest of us on planet earth, but when you combine it with this frenzied gun culture, then it does become an increasingly disturbing trend. Some Americans don't treat their guns as just a tool to hunt or protect ... many don't even see it as a hobby and instead an absolute lifestyle. These are the people who feel the need to flash their weapons to everyone as if it's some type of cultural status. Because of this, you have a growing number of people who become obsessed with the weapon. Instead of it being an accessory, it's now seen as essentially an extension of their being. It's always about the gun. It's about the look, the feel, the power and the thrill. The extent of their desire for these weapons seems a bit pornographic. The thing with pornography is that it can become an unhealthy obsession if it engrosses every aspect of your lifestyle.

In the end, what's the difference between getting that thrill from porn or a gun? It's all the same if you think about it - except a tit on the computer screen never kills.

Beyond that, now you have these individuals who buy into a certain mindset that they're the defenders of freedom - the protectors of everything good. You saw that on full display when Jones ranted about a second revolution and you've heard it from guys like Jesse Ventura, a man I have a lot of respect for, who lists the government as a reason we need guns - suggesting, openly, that we can only keep our government in check by the bullet.

I take offense to that because it seems this is becoming an increasingly acceptable narrative. The problem here is that we have a fairly grim history of Americans feeling the need to kill their leaders because of the very reasons Alex Jones pushes every day during his radio show - that the government is evil and treasonous and must be stopped ... at all costs.

What other nation of our stature and our progressiveness has seen so many of its leaders struck down by a bullet the last 150 years? Abraham Lincoln. John Kennedy. Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy. That doesn't even get into the leaders who survived assassination attempts - Teddy Roosevelt (who was shot), FDR (the mayor of Chicago was killed instead), Gerald Ford (twice!), and Ronald Reagan (who was also shot). Then there are the threats. Hundreds and thousands of threats to past presidents, including our current. Some of those threats turned to hardened plans and were only foiled at the last moment.

But the thing is, the thing that is often ignored, is that while we hold up the American Revolution as proof of citizen force, we also forget everything that has since followed. American history has progressed and developed not through citizens arming themselves and defending their inalienable rights, and the trials of liberty, but often by peaceful protest and internal, bloodless demand.

Women didn't gain the right to vote because they stormed the capitol with their pistols and demanded it. No, they protested and pushed their leaders to do what they believed was right. In the end, blood was not shed to give them that right. Forty years later, a preacher from Georgia helped lead millions to the promised land and it wasn't by military force or violent uprisings - but generally peaceful protests and a resilient determination. Ironically, the man of peace was brought down by violence.

In most every reach for freedom we've seen in this country, especially the last 100 years, a gun was not needed.

Guns might not be the problem. But it's clear the gun culture in this country is. It bleeds over into troubling conspiracies and leads to irrational thought. I don't know what the solution is, but I do know the status quo is damning and we'll only continue to be haunted by gun violence until we wake up and ask ourselves why our culture admires the gun more than peace. Until that question is answered, unfortunately, the violence will only continue."



In the Federalist papers (28), Alexander Hamilton spoke of The Idea of Restraining the Legislative Authority in Regard to the Common Defense Considered
We should recollect that the extent of the military force must, at all events, be regulated by the resources of the country. For a long time to come, it will not be possible to maintain a large army; and as the means of doing this increase, the population and natural strength of the community will proportionably increase. When will the time arrive that the federal government can raise and maintain an army capable of erecting a despotism over the great body of the people of an immense empire, who are in a situation, through the medium of their State governments, to take measures for their own defense, with all the celerity, regularity, and system of independent nations? The apprehension may be considered as a disease, for which there can be found no cure in the resources of argument and reasoning.


Alexander Hamilton had the following published exactly 225 years ago in a New York Newspaper
"... This desirable uniformity can only be accomplished by confiding the regulation of the militia to the direction of the national authority. It is, therefore, with the most evident propriety, that the plan of the convention proposes to empower the Union "to provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining the militia, and for governing such part of them as may be employed in the service of the United States, RESERVING TO THE STATES RESPECTIVELY THE APPOINTMENT OF THE OFFICERS, AND THE AUTHORITY OF TRAINING THE MILITIA ACCORDING TO THE DISCIPLINE PRESCRIBED BY CONGRESS."


How, in 225 years, we went from a rational discussion about the common defense and what type of militia we should or should not include in our yet to be ratified Constitution to paranoia and conspiracies is a sad story. The likes of Alex Jones, Glenn Beck and Wayne LaPierre are not patriots, but perhaps the disease borne of apprehension that Hamilton warned us about.


and
Raine

Update:

On the topic of apprehension, it is worth noting how the Second Amendment found a place into the bill of Rights. This was written in 1998, and it is one of the few historical presentations of its history:The Hidden History of the Second Amendment
In his 99-page article, Professor Bogus argues that the evidence, including an analysis of Madison's original language, and an understanding of how he and other founders drew on England's Declaration of Rights, strongly suggests that Madison wrote this provision for the specific purpose of assuring his constituency that Congress could not use its newly acquired power to deprive the states of an armed militia. Madison's concern, Professor Bogus argues, was not hunting, self-defense, national defense, or resistance to governmental tyranny, but slave control.

The "hidden history" of the Second Amendment is important for two reasons. First, it supports the view that the amendment does not grant individuals a right to keep and bear arms for their own purposes; rather it only protects the right to bear arms within the militia, as defined within the main body of the Constitution, under the joint control of the federal and state governments. At the time, the southern states extensively regulated their militias and prescribed their slave control responsibilities. Second, the hidden history is important because it fundamentally changes how we think about the right to keep and bear arms. The Second Amendment takes on an entirely different complexion when instead of being symbolized by a musket in the hands of the minutemen, it is associated with a musket in the hands of the slave holder.
It appears that the 2nd amendment was born from the fear of slave uprisings from states in the south.

It took another war and the 14th amendment to begin to change that.

Having said that, it should be worth noting that we have, in Article 3, section III of the constitution, a treason clause.
Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying war against them, or in adhering to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort. No person shall be convicted of treason unless on the testimony of two witnesses to the same overt act, or on confession in open court.

The Congress shall have power to declare the punishment of treason, but no attainder of treason shall work corruption of blood, or forfeiture except during the life of the person attainted.
Perhaps I am of a minority in seeing a certain irony from arguments put forward by those that claim an unadulterated right to own firearms. It is in our constitution that rising up against the government is treason. We can petition, we can protest -- we can do a lot of things -- suggesting to take arms against our government against tyranny? Not so much... it's right there in the constitution -- it's a no no.

Couple the history of fearing slave uprisings with the treason caluse and tell me if this statement is not worth considering with regard to our current Gun discussion dialogue:
This ideology claims to rely heavily on the Second Amendment, and yet it is rooted not in the Founders’ vision, but in the insurrectionary ideas of Daniel Shays and those who rose up against the government of Massachusetts in 1786 and 1787. Indeed, there are gun-rights advocates today who think the Second Amendment actually gives them the right to take up arms against the government—but if that were true the Second Amendment would have repealed the Constitution’s treason clause, which defines treason as taking up arms against the government!


People who say they have a right to own a gun have that right. They can say such things because as a citizen of the country -- our country -- have the right to free speech. That said, I believe that the right to own a gun ends when one speaks about fighting the tyranny of the government. The right to own a gun should not mean the right to overthrow our government -- no matter how awful one may consider our government.
 

46 comments (Latest Comment: 01/11/2013 04:29:46 by Will in Chicago)
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