( – promoted by lowkell)
The circus is in town again, so it’s time for my annual blog post about the “State of the Gunonwealth.” It’s time to see what came tumbling out to the clown car again this year, at least regarding firearms legislation. As in previous years, there’s plenty of crazy to go around. So here is a brief roundup of some of the high, or should I say low points, of the firearms bills:
This year we have two bills to allow concealed carry in the “unsecured” parts of our air terminals. Seems we can’t rely solely on the increasing number of highly trained and competent individuals that show up at TSA checkpoints, with loaded guns that they “forgot they had,” to keep us safe. After all, should a rampaging hoard of AQAP members come spilling out of one of the many Yemeni Airways flights to Richmond international or an ISIL pickup truck take a wrong turn outside Mosul and find itself in the airport parking lot in Roanoke, we need to be able to rely on Gary and his Glock to protect all the passengers from being mowed down in the baggage claim area.
Either that, or see him shooting off a significant part of his manhood during a “wardrobe malfunction” in front of the urinals.
Not satisfied with turning our airports into a scene from a Rambo movie, there are several bills that would “enhance the security” of our school kids, despite the fact that most of them are already safer in school than they are in their homes. A brilliant idea to decriminalize the carry of knives of all sizes, Ninja throwing stars, blackjacks and even ballistic knives for anyone in, or on the bus to or from, Private and Religious schools would certainly spice up the Kindergarten classes. This “Baptist Babies with Blackjacks” bill might not make you feel like immediately transferring your kid from Public to a Private school, but if you do want to, make sure they are packing a tazer on the first day of class, or at least a set of suitably sized brass knuckles.
Not satisfied with simply taking K-12 to the “next level of DEFCON”, there are several different approaches being tried to force more guns into our Colleges and Universities. I am sure the well-trained and ever-vigilant campus police would welcome having a host of secret “deputies,” with unknown levels of skill and experience, roaming the campus with loaded guns in their book bags, just busting to make somebodies day!
Last years “Bazooka” bill is back again, but this time carefully crafted to exclude the Bazooka part! That might seem to be a sign of intelligent thought being applied, but wait – there’s more! The bill would still force local police to sign off on almost any Commonwealth citizen that can fog up a mirror being able to purchase something essential as a fully functional belt feed machine gun, even if the local constabulary knows the individual to be one taco short of a combination plate.
Perhaps the most “high caliber” (pun intended) attempt to revise, or curtail, our firearms laws comes from a Resolution to amend the Commonwealth’s Constitution to “explain” to the uninitiated that Article 13 (the template for the much younger and less wordy 2nd Amendment) actually means that the right to keep and bear arms is an individual right (not connected with militia service). Working against that idea is the actual language of our venerable Constitution, which actually states:
That a well regulated militia, composed of the body of the people, trained to arms, is the proper, natural, and safe defense of a free state, therefore, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed; that standing armies, in time of peace, should be avoided as dangerous to liberty; and that in all cases the military should be under strict subordination to, and governed by, the civil power.
Remember, when SCOTUS managed to carefully excise the first words of the 2nd amendment in order to support its groundbreaking decision that keeping and bearing arms was an individual right? They did so with relative ease, as the two parts of the 2nd Amendment are merely separated by a simple comma. However, look carefully at the Virginia language and you will see the very unmistakable word “therefore” linking the portions regarding militia service and the part about keeping and bearing arms.
Seems to my simple brain that “A,B” and “A therefore B” are not exactly the same logical constructs. Pretty hard to say B has nothing to do with A when you have a “therefore” between them. As a matter of fact, looking at the language, I would be much more interested in an “explanation” of why we still have the words; “that standing armies, in time of peace, should be avoided as dangerous to liberty,”, given that the USA currently has the most powerful, the most formidable (and the most expensive) standing army on the planet – not to mention that much of it seems to be stationed in Virginia!
To finish on a positive note, there are around 26 bills this year (many of which are backed by the Administration) that would make positive changes to existing firearms law. Bills that could possibly reduce the appalling number of men, women, children and veterans in our Commonwealth whose lives come to an abrupt halt each year after the sudden injection of a lead object. Background checks on unlicensed sales of firearms, keeping firearms from individuals that use family members as punching bags and the like, would all offer significant public safety benefits, without putting even a greasy fingerprint on the right of law abiding individuals to arm themselves appropriately for the coming Zombie Apocalypse. Only time will tell how our elected leaders will deal with all these issues, but I wouldn’t recommend holding your breath!
I apologize to anyone who might be offended by my rather flippant remarks on this deadly serious subject, but as one who has dedicated his time and energy to gun violence prevention, I feel that if I don’t find something to smile about in the face of so much lunacy, then I would not be able to face another day down at the sausage factory!
Please note, I have not used any names or bill numbers in a futile attempt to protect the innocent and the guilty!
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