I hadn’t noticed that the conflict had gone viral. I hadn’t even noticed it had happened. Apparently Alex Jones went on Piers Morgan’s show on CNN and was typically Alex Jones. Weirdly, people were surprised to discover that Alex Jones was a complete nutjob. People were also weirdly surprised that a talking head with a British accent doesn’t like guns, almost as if they didn’t know that the United Kingdom has some pretty strict regulations on guns, which is why the United States adopted the second amendment, rightly or wrongly.
This is further evidence that,
- I’ve never been happier to not be a watcher/listener of either of these idiot’s shows (or CNN in general)
- That Alex Jones and a good portion of his followers are becoming dangerously deluded. Banning assault rifles isn’t coming for your guns. The assault rifle dressing on the weapon may be cosmetic, but it also might serve a purpose (too bad no one seems to be studying the subject in depth) and I would really like to ask the people who think they should have access to military grade weapons exactly which weekends each month they are spending training with their (state/locally organized) militias? I’d really like to get a serious answer to that question because it’s the part of the amendment which seems to be completely ignored. And:
- It’s time to re-institute the fairness doctrine on bandwidths which are licensed from the FCC. If these panderers of vitriol wish to continue their paranoid rants, they should be required to balance their adrenaline feed hysteria with an equal number of hours of quiet mood music. Also:
- Most Americans are complete morons when it comes to history.
I was sick of Alex Jones when he was running his public access channel here in Austin, and he should still be confined to that channel because his rants haven’t changed. If he warranted a larger audience, his communications skills and message should have improved. His is the same, old, tired, schtick that I’ve heard a thousand times. Piers handled him perfectly. “Oh, would you like more rope? Here, let me get that for you.”
On the other hand, everyone who is pro-gun simply skips over the parts of the Second Amendment they don’t want to address. If the State of Texas drafted every 18 to 40 year old tomorrow and started a militia as it was intended by the founders, there would be screaming all across the state. But that proper usage of the population for defensive measures is what the 2nd amendment establishes.
The fact that the federal government already limits access to other military grade weapons, and so can limit access to the assault rifles as well if it so desires. You want a semi-automatic weapon anyway? Buy one that isn’t dressed up to look sexy and sell to wanna-be soldiers or become one. A soldier, that is. Satisfying a need for defense (the finding in the Heller case) can be defined as shall-issue permitting for a weapon. This doesn’t mean there can’t be required training to go along with that permitting. It doesn’t guarantee you’ll get the exact type of weapon you want. Pro-gunners want this to be about banning all guns, because they win if that’s the argument. It’s not the argument being advanced.
I get it, no one wants to be defenseless. If these gunnuts (and I mean that in the kindest way) want to have 50, 100 guns, machine guns, rocket launchers, tanks, whatever, it’s completely within reason for the government to turn around (local, state and/or federal) and say “OK, if you want those weapons, insist on having those weapons, you will be trained and certified to carry those weapons, and you will do it in the following prescribed manner.” There is nothing in the Constitution that limits the cities and states from reconstituting militias of their own and requiring all citizens to participate and be trained. No matter what the Second Amendment meant historically when it referenced the militia. We aren’t living in history, we live in the here and now.
