THE RIGHT TO BEARS ARMS VS THE RIGHT TO SELF DEFENSE

On 10 April 2013, the Guardian of London online newspaper featured 13 photos of U S Senators who oppose any gun control legislation.   Senator Mike Lee, Republican of Utah, was in the group.   The montage reminded me how much of  current gun control debate focuses on a number of irrelevant issues.   

We citizens should not to get distracted by them. 

People on both sides of the gun control debate can agree on our right to self defense.

However, the right to self defense does not necessary require a gun.    What gets lost in the current post Newtown massacre debate is this:   under most circumstances, self defense does not require automatic weapons with large ammunition clips. 

The right to self defense is an obvious right. 

Furthermore, Book of Mormon and Bible scriptures guarantee it. 

The Common Law guaranteed it.     However ---

Using the Second Amendment as a right to personal defense is to misread it and its original intent.  The second amendment is about community militias, which means it is really about power maintenance  on a community level.   

Automatic weapons have made civilian life more dangerous;  they have made warfare even more awful all the way around.  Automatic weapons are offensive in all senses of the term.   In the days when a man armed himself with a sharpened stick, he could do only as much damage as his strength allowed or the strength of his opponents allowed.    Today, automatic weapon means that any weakling with a trigger finger can do quite a lot of damage to civilians with relatively little effort.    

THE CALLS TO ACTION

I urge members of Congress to work for abolition of at least two weapons that have made the whole world unsafe: atomic weaponry and the automatic firearm.  

Now, as to proposed gun control legislation in Congress:   I suppose the popular proposals are better than nothing.  Marginally.    Congress, however,  refuses to address two issues that it must address.  

One: profits from firearm manufacturing, particularly the profitably of automatic weapons, keeps us from developing, finding, and using non-lethal self-defense protection.   

Two: the Second Amendment is out of date and needs replacing with a modern amendment guaranteeing explicitly the right to self defense. 

Remember please this basic point: we should not put 21st century public safety ahead of a misreading of a 220-year-old sentence.