If the Founding Fathers Rose From Their Graves

Well I just couldn’t hold it in any longer. I will admit it, the Facebook posts got to me. Apparently because I am a Democrat, I hate guns and anybody who owns one. Obama wants to disarm America and make us all wear swastikas on our sleeves. Enough is enough folks. The truth is that democrats are not anti-gun, they are anti-murder. I personally have no problem with somebody owning a rifle to hunt with or owning a handgun to protect their home. I don’t think we should be able to own assault rifles because it’s cool and then use the second amendment as a shield to do so.

 

If the founding fathers rose from their graves, what would they see? I ask this question because that’s another shield that conservatives use when challenged on the gun control issue. I think overall they would be proud of the nation they had helped build but I think the lack of evolution in the Bill of Rights would leave them puzzled. With the exception of the third, all the items in the Bill of Rights has changed with the times compared to when the document was written. But has the second amendment really changed with the times?

If the founding fathers rose from their graves they would see a society that has changed when it comes to the way the freedoms they sought to protect have been carried out. The Supreme Court has helped guide us as we have changed, just as the framers has intended. The Bill of Rights seemed to be a top ten list of sorts for those days. The first protects religion and forms of speech and then the threat of safety to our nation at that time, i.e. British attack, native Americans, and slave uprisings. And so to that end they wrote:

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.

You were allowed to have guns so you could fight against any of these threats if they arose in order to keep our new nation safe. How likely is it that we will have a slave uprising in the near future? The fact is we live in different times. If the founding fathers rose they would see a new time. One that glorifies gun violence in its culture and has been increasingly turning those guns on each other. I think they would prefer to remain dead and yes, roll over in their graves.

One last thought. As a school administrator I flag many questions about whether or not schools should have armed guards at the doors or should administrators carry guns. The truth is I think we are going at it the wrong way. I was told by a police detective that of the last 30 mass shootings in this country, only seven had been in schools. As he told me the circumstances of those individuals and why they committed these crimes on innocent people, I realized we have a people problem. Sure we need to have some type of gun control measures to reduce the opportunity of troubled people to do this, but if we don’t try to fix our people it will not matter.

http://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/billofrights