A judge recently overruled a long-time assault weapons ban in the state of California maintaining an AR-15 was no more dangerous than a Swiss Army knife.
Where was he during Columbine when two spoiled brats took aim at their fellow students with assault weapons, leading to numerous imitators throughout the years, or Virginia Tech where over thirty people were killed by another fellow student who bought at least one of his guns at an unregulated gun show in the parking lot, or perhaps worst of all the Las Vegas country music concert where a man converted his assault weapons into machine guns using a bump stock. 60 people were killed, 411 wounded, the total rising to 867 during the panic that ensued. Conservative politicians and their loyal voters maintain that you are guaranteed a right to bear arms. That's not necessarily true .
The Second Amendment states: “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.” The only militias we hear about are the ones in Michigan and they're certainly not well regulated. Do the Boogaloos and the Proud Boys who showed up at the Jan. 6th insurrection count? Nope, not regulated.
Okay, where did the Second Amendment come from? During the Revolution Washington depended on the Green Mountain boys and other local militias to form an army. During the Constitutional Convention, our founders worried that another king or a dictator would usurp our democratic government. They needed to rely on those local militias. The British tried to confiscate their guns before and during the Revolution. The Founders didn't take into account the possibility that those militias and those gun owners might support the dictator or the king as recent events seem to have shown.
Chicago once had the toughest gun laws in the country, until the Supreme Court overruled them, once again ignoring the part about a well-regulated militia.
Chicago has been a slaughter house ever since.
We absolutely must do something about guns. Recently in Minneapolis three children under the age of ten were killed by wild gunfire, assumably fired by gang members at war. This was happening in the same place that George Floyd died. Conservatives like to blame black parents, claiming they can't control their kids when in reality all these kids need to do is go down on the corner and somebody will sell them a gun or get somebody at a gun show to buy one for them. It's a dangerous toy, just like the ones a large segment of our population has stored in their basements along with way too much ammunition. See the perpetrator of the recent California mass shooting.
We don't need a militia to insure our democracy. We already have a national guard that saved us during the Jan. 6th insurrection. We also have one of the biggest armed forces in the world. Most of them are loyal to our Founders, not some former reality host.
Let's start with background checks for every gun purchase in the United States and red flag laws to put a check on spousal killings. Just remember; if you buy a gun for the first time, you are nine-times more likely to commit suicide than somebody who doesn't. Remember that the next time there's a mass killing. In the past gun sales have gone up after those.