Our Second Amendment Urgently Needs Revamped!

By Donald A. Collins | 28 November 2022
Church and State

(Photo: Victoria Pickering / Flickr / CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

Fear must by now have griped enough Americans about the increasing spate on gun terrorism to finally want serious political action. CNN recently reported 600 such attacks this year.

One of the standard arguments for no gun control has been the gun lobby’s promoting the fear of government taking guns or gun rights from gun owners.

By golly, that “fear” (e.g. real reform needed urgently) needs to be addressed AS TRUE!

If having a gun makes you safer, how come we lead the world in such deaths? Americans own more guns than our population of 340 million.

Read here.

Having a gun doesn’t give you safety. A comprehensive article in the Scientific American says: “More Guns Do Not Stop More Crimes, Evidence Shows: More firearms do not keep people safe, hard numbers show. Why do so many Americans believe the opposite?”

Read the carefully researched facts here.

But the growing intensity of the pro-gun movement has now cowed many elected leaders into fear of taking the urgent actions needed.

One truly frightening story on the front page of the Saturday November 26th NY Times shows how dangerously radical right wingers are threatening our democracy.

Examples from that seminal article:

This month, armed protesters appeared outside an elections center in Phoenix, hurling baseless accusations that the election for governor had been stolen from the Republican, Kari Lake. In October, Proud Boys with guns joined a rally in Nashville where conservative lawmakers spoke against transgender medical treatments for minors.

In June, armed demonstrations around the United States amounted to nearly one a day. A group led by a former Republican state legislator protested a gay pride event in a public park in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho. Men with guns interrupted a Juneteenth festival in Franklin, Tenn., handing out fliers claiming that white people were being replaced. Among the others were rallies in support of gun rights in Delaware and abortion rights in Georgia.

Whether at the local library, in a park or on Main Street, most of these incidents happen where Republicans have fought to expand the ability to bear arms in public, a movement bolstered by a recent Supreme Court ruling on the right to carry firearms outside the home. The loosening of limits has occurred as violent political rhetoric rises and the police in some places fear bloodshed among an armed populace on a hair trigger.

Read the whole frightening article here.

What now is the solution? Citizens protesting? Yes, but the most powerful demands must need to come from the business community.

Will they be cowed too? Loss of lives of customers vs loss of gun control absolutist customers?

Citizens demanding business taking action could be highly effective.

The recent signing by President Biden of the first new Federal gun legislation in years is of course a start.

Read here what Biden just got through.

But there is a political divide with more Republicans owning guns than Democrats. Read research facts here.

Chris Todd on Sunday’s November 27th Meet the Press program recalled the suggestion 54 years ago of former Pennsylvania Governor Ray Schafer that when guns are sold the purchaser should be registered. A moderate Republican, Shafer pointed out the people who bought car had to register. Why not guns? Indeed, but the idea sadly did not get implemented!

My last article made what should not be considered an unrealistic suggestion–and will not be at some point in our fast changing demographic future, as younger voters predominate–that we need two new Constitutional Amendments to avert a move toward the takeover of democracy by the authorizations led initially by Trump but now others of his ilk who now see opportunity to carry on his program of which there is both less gun control and less the related right for women to choose abortion.

Former US Navy officer, banker and venture capitalist, Donald A. Collins, a free lance writer living in Washington, DC, has spent over 50 years working for women’s reproductive health as a board member and/or officer of numerous family planning organizations including Planned Parenthood Federation of America, Guttmacher Institute, Family Health International and Ipas. Yale under graduate, NYU MBA. He is the author of “From the Dissident Left: A Collection of Essays 2004-2013”, “Trump Becoming Macbeth: Will our democracy survive?”, “We Humans Overwhelm Our Earth: 11 or 2 Billion by 2100?”, “What Can Be Done Now to Save Habitable Life on Planet Earth?”, “Vote”, “Can Homo Sapiens Survive?” and “Will Choice and Democracy Win?”.

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