Friday, November 7, 2008

How stupid can you possibly be?

I couldn't pass this up. The headline: Fears of Democrat crackdown lead to gun sales boom. The gist of gun owners and sellers: Obama will make it difficult or impossible to buy assault weapons and/or will take away your right to own guns.

Fact: Obama has supported curbs on gun purchases, including for automatic weapons and assault rifles. This in no way takes away your right to own a gun.

Fact: Obama would like to implement increased responsibility for gun owners and sellers and has voted to allow gun manufacturers to remain open to lawsuits. (Which is only fair- cigarette companies are responsible for deaths caused by their products, car makers are responsible for their safety systems and crash tests, food companies are responsible for illnesses cause by their food, so why should gun manufacturers get some kind of special free pass?)

Where, exactly, did Obama ever say, act, or think to take away people's "2nd amendment rights"? I put that in quotes because, like much of the Constitution, it's debatable how it has been applied in practice. If you think Obama is going to roll into the White House and start smacking down gun ownership laws, I think you're too stupid to own a gun. If you think Obama is going to "take away your rights" you're also stupid. Let me explain.

Over the past 6 years, Americans have lost or had reduced more rights than you can shake a stick at. Just to name a few- you can now be spied on via wiretaps on your phones with no probable cause, your right of habeus corpus can be suspended because the government says so in any case they claim is "terror related", the right to a free press has been infringed by the subpoena of confidential sources and subsequent jailing of reporters for not divulging them, your rights to privacy with companies you do business with have been trampled because of data retention policies that increase data storage and force businesses to turn over that data to the government with no questions asked and no recourse to discuss the matter (via National Security Letters- look it up), your rights of privacy and travel have been severely restricted via random checkpoints set up in border zones that can check documentation and personal items such as laptops without reasonable cause (not just border crossing points- actual checkpoints within the country that are slowly moving further inland and require you to show citizenship status), and your right to information about government actions and policies has been trampled via denials of reasonable Freedom of Information requests.

Someone explain to me why fools are screaming about gun rights that HAVE NOT been infringed upon in any way yet, but are absolutely silent about these other horrific abuses and proscriptions on basic rights. If you think Obama will take away your rights but Bush somehow preserved them, you're living in fantasy land. All we've done over the past 6 years is quietly lose rights or have those rights severely reduced. There are a few groups fighting (the EFF, the ACLU, etc), but so few people paid any attention and willingly went along with these horrific policies in the name of "security". Just so we're clear- trading your rights for ANYTHING only delivers that much more control to the people that provide what you traded for. Personally, I'll live in a world with an incomprehensibly small chance of being the victim of a terror attack and keep my rights to privacy and a free press. People died to give us those rights in the first place. Now we're tossing them aside to feel safe and turning them over to a group of people that, while duly elected, do not necessarily have the best interests of the general populace at heart.

So gun people, shut the hell up and stop saying stupid shit. No one is taking your precious guns away. Obama is not going to somehow repeal the second amendment. If you want rights, march your asses to D.C. and demand back the rights that have already been taken, not the ones you imagine might be in the future. Let's get back to where we started and then worry about what may or may not happen.

1 comment:

Adam said...

"Those who would trade in their freedom for protection deserve neither." --Talib Kweli

One quick thought: this is the way Americans really fuck themselves-- we get all caught up on a handful of issues (abortion, gun control, gay marriage, etc.) to the point where most individuals really only care about one or two things and don't even notice the myriad rights being taken away.

Truth is, if the erosion of civil liberties continues, by the time government DOES do away with the second amendment, Americans will wake up and realize we've lost all recourse-- no right of assembly, free speech, free press, or to petition our government for a redress of grievances.

Though, I guess living in a hyper-controlled Orwellian future would be a small price to pay, so long as we can keep our high-powered assault rifles for duck hunting...