Re: Corona Virus: is it the beginning of the end?
Ethin, I think I see why you're resistant, and I understand that as an American, you're very used to the idea that your country in part defines itself by allowing citizens to carry firearms.
But ask yourself this:
1. Practically speaking, how great is the need for a gun for your average citizen?
2. Practically speaking, how likely are citizens to need guns to defend themselves from the government?
3. Following from that, how likely is it, practically speaking, that a citizen actually uses their firearms to defend themselves against the government?
As has been pointed out, this part of the constitution was written during an entirely different point in history. If there was ever a period in history where it made sense to own firearms and to carry them about, I believe that time has long passed. I feel that you might be resistant to change purely because some part of you feels that to get rid of the freedom to walk around with a gun will somehow make America less American. If that is, in fact, the way you feel, I urge you to probe the problem from a different angle. The only real tangible result of American gun legislation and the second amendment, in this case, are things like school shootings, hate-crimes, and mentally ill individuals committing mass homicide because weapons that can kill whole groups of people are far too easy to get hold of. I don't hear of nearly enough gun-owning Americans doing good in the world because they have the right to bear arms. Where were well-meaning armed Americans when riots broke out and police started using tear gas on innocents? Where were they when george Floyd and countless others died? Hell, Brionna Taylor's boyfriend owned a gun, and all it resulted in was Taylor herself being shot and killed following a no-knock warrant and entry into her home.
This is not a shining example of what it means to be American; if it is, I think your problem runs far deeper than the gun violence itself, as I'd be pretty disgusted to be proud of a country whose main selling point was "hey, if you're American, you can walk around with a gun". That's...not really a thing anybody needs to be proud of, especially when so few people actually do anything meaningful with that freedom. I promise you that most other countries that have stricter gun control - stricter by far, I might add - don't foster an atmosphere where your average person cowers behind seven locks and bullet-proof glass because they don't have a gun. Oh, there's crime, sure, you'll get no argument there, and guns do exist. People get shot. It happens. But because guns aren't all over the place, it's not nearly the sort of numbers we're talking about in the States. So I say if we can do it, so can you. And resistance, to me at least, simply boils down to an unreasoned aversion to change.
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