First of all, I need to state unequivocally that I own several guns. I like to shoot them and, while not a hunter (with the exception of prairie dogs), I believe that gun ownership is not just my right but a necessity. Living in the country (just a few miles out of town), I feel compelled to protect my family from both animal and human beasts.
Even when I lived in the city, I owned a gun (a sidearm, to carry camping but also to dispatch any unwanted intruders).
Having said that, while I’ve never held the Second Amendment as particularly sacrosanct — there are a few other amendments that I hold in slightly higher esteem (the 21st amendment certainly comes to mind) — I’m glad I have the right to own and fire a gun.
Still, the need to stock an arsenal in my basement, purchase armor-piercing rounds or possess an assault rifle (either automatic or semiautomatic) escapes me. I can understand an interest in collecting antique or classic firearms but just having a bunch of guns for the sake of having them seems a bit crazy.
OK, really crazy. The person holding enough firearms to supply a Marine platoon strikes me as someone in need of heavy medication and prolonged therapy. They need to take down the Rambo posters and quit planning for Armageddon. The new world order black helicopters aren’t coming. There is no wave of zombie brain-eaters to fear. For almost 2000 years, the faithful have been waiting for the world to end and, unless we’re all figments of the imagination of LaPlace’s demon, I’m composing this blog in a world that carries on the way it always has.
Which brings me to the nutjobs carrying guns to Obama healthcare town hall meetings. Earlier this month, in New Hampshire, one William Kostric appeared outside President Obama’s Portsmouth, N.H. town hall meeting with a holstered pistol and a sign saying “It Is Time To Water The Tree Of Liberty,” invoking the phrase from Thomas Jefferson that, “The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.”
Again, last week, a man “Chris” brought an AR-15 to a Phoenix rally (where as many as a dozen people with unconcealed weapons were observed — no estimate on how many were carrying concealed weapons) was asked, if he thought the “solution may be some sort of violent revolution,” to which Chris replied, “I believe that may unfortunately have to be the way.”
The message is clear, unequivocal: if healthcare reform is passed, a few armed crazies believe that armed insurrection is a reasonable, patriotic response to the will of the majority. If the ballot box doesn’t suit the tiny-minded few, that moronic minority is not afraid to flash their steel for the purpose of intimidating those of us with a firm belief in the democratic process.
What has become clear is that, rather than engaging in reasoned and civil discourse, teabaggers have resorted to thuggish behavior, shouting down opponents and legislators, bullying anyone who might dare disagree with them.
And, as Karl noted in an earlier blog (scroll down to midway), much of the behavior is barely coded racism. Teabaggers boo a poster of Rosa Parks (last year, my second-grader did a report on Parks as an American hero) and, when the woman (African American) unfurls the poster again, an angry thug rips it.
On Tuesday, a healthcare opponent, shouting down an Israeli American speaking in support of Israel’s national healthcare system, screams, “Heil, Hitler!”
Really, if you can’t make your argument without petulant, puerile behavior, perhaps your argument lacks significant merit. And, if you can’t make your argument without flashing a gun, you’re nothing more, or less, than an impotent imbecile with nothing to say other than, “Watch out for me, I have a gun.”
