— Musings —01.18.2013 08:31 AM
Not a joke
The ad you may have heard about, and possibly seen. First reaction: whoever did this was drunk, or on drugs, or both.
I’ll have plenty to say about the NRA and their acolytes in the Sun papers on Sunday. They won’t like it.
NB poet Alden Nowlan in one of his lyrics suggested that we live on the earth, and within our meanings. I like it when we get right down to what words actually mean in determining our behaviours. We use words to build the myth that guides our actions.
Because the words are so important in this 2nd amendment, the two versions used in USA are reproduced below:
Congress (in Philadelphia at that time) ratified this one:
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.
The original 13 states ratified this one:
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.
I imagine later states joining the union ratified the congressional version.
It has been interpreted in USA courts to mean that every individual has a right to keep and bear arms. If so, I cannot see that any law or reg from any level of government can be constitutional.
Thom Hartmann(one of my favourite Americans) has an interesting twist on the fact that some of the 13 states balked at giving too much power to the central government. He says that the 2nd Amendment was put in to protect the right of local slave control militias to keep their arms.
I tried to begin with a sentence using the same grammatical construction as the amendment, but I used a subordinating conjunction, rather than the Latin based ablative ( certainly framers like James Madison would have been schooled in Latin grammar and rhetoric). I ‘ll try to end with the ablative construction.
30 000 deaths from gunshot being an acceptable price for freedom, the peoples right to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.
that’s one of the weirdest things I’ve ever seen
Just goes to show that a well-made ad (ie – slick; good voiceover; superficial “truthiness”) does not necessarily mean the message actually makes any logical sense whatsoever.
There are those in power who would (if they could get away with it) ban ALL private firearms ownership. Of course, you can bet your ass that those same people would live in gated communities protected by armed guards while the rest of us lived at the mercy of the criminal scum who would, of course, be keeping their weapons.
Does the message at least start to make sense now?
I’m trying to fit it in with ‘security of a free sate.’
They won’t like it? They won’t care.
“Obama’s Operation Fast and Furious Gun Smuggling Program Linked to Over 200 Murders”
http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2011/09/obamas-operation-fast-and-furious-program-linked-to-over-200-murders
“An investigation into Fast and Furious, a government program that put around 2,000 guns in the hands of Mexican drug cartels ”
“According to the report, guns from the ATF operation were used to commit massacres in Mexico, including the murder of 16 young people attending a party and 18 young men in a rehabilitation center in Ciudad Juarez.”
http://www.deseretnews.com/article/765608621/Univision-report-looks-at-deadly-toll-of-US-gun-smuggling-in-Operation-Fast-and-Furious.html?pg=a