It's three in the morning, and time I made sure the bathroom is still there. So now that I'm disgustingly wide awake, I'm thinking of a debate I watched on CNN last night about the gun situation.
There's a couple of things I think they're missing. First of all, when the Second Amendment was created, the founding fathers couldn't anticipate automatic weapons or even repeating rifles and revolvers. Samuel Colt didn't patent his revolver until 1835, and the Winchester repeating rifle wasn't introduced until 1866, 75 years after the Bill of Rights was ratified by the U.S. Congress. So all this talk about how "it's our right to have semi-automatic weapons because it says so in the Second Amendment" is wrong. It says nothing of the sort. Those hadn't been invented yet.
The other point I'd like to mention is that as long everyone is packing a pistol or a slightly modified military style assault rifle or something equally lethal, nobody has to really try to get along with others, because they can blow them away if made angry enough. And that seems to be what's happening. "Those who live by the sword die by the sword" and that same principle applies to guns. Nobody needs a gun to hunt for their supper these days, and when kids have access to weapons that can kill dozens in a very short time, logic dictates that something ought to be done about it.
Hi, Ray...thank you for your thoughts. Very good points, indeed. I sure wish there was a solution that could make life less...strained w/worry over something like this happening! Why that incident in Portland happened at the very mall and food court that I sat - 2 months earlier - with a friend and her 90-year-old mother, who had taken the trek up, from California, to [probably] have her last visit with her sister. The dude parked right where we had parked; went through the Macy's that we had shopped in. Quite daunting to think of. Even more eerie: as I sat in the food court, later, I had a vision of something like that happening there. I tried to "shoo" the thought away but...gotta tell you; that really sent a chill down my spine to see the actual location of that shooting spree, recently. It's just awful and SAD that frightening thoughts like that should pass through us, every time we're in a public setting, these days. Can't tell you how often I wish for simpler times: skinny-dipping in a lake, in Canada; sitting under the stars, in a natural hot springs... Where have those days gone????? :-(
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