The right to not get shot
On Thursday, on PBS there was a “town hall” where people actually advocated for packing weapons in inappropriate places like schools, playgrounds, stores and government buildings. I could feel my blood pressure rising as the show went on.
Yes, we all have rights under the Constitution. What about the rights of the murdered to life? What about the right of the families of the victims to the pursuit of happiness? What about my right to go shopping or for a walk in the park without looking around for possible active shooters? Gun owners aren’t the only ones with rights.
I keep hearing the NRA and other gun advocates using the Second Amendment as a rationale for owning assault rifles. I don’t believe the framers of the Constitution had AK-47s in mind when they wrote the Second Amendment. In the days of Franklin and Jefferson, owning a gun meant you had a squirrel rifle that fired one shot, and then you had to take a ball you made yourself, pour black powder in the barrel of your rifle with your powder horn, put in some wadding, ram it all down, pour a little powder in your firing mechanism, and then, if you were lucky, your gun went off when you pulled the trigger.
When Aaron Burr and Alexander Hamilton had their famous duel, they used flintlock pistols. One shot. They didn’t just show up and start firing. They made an appointment, were equally armed, and proceeded according to agreed upon rules.
The framers of the Constitution were not anticipating guns that can spit out 15 rounds a second or fire armor-piercing ammunition. They didn’t think an individual would shoot up a school and livestream it on the internet.
A militia was a common thing in revolutionary times. You had your continental soldiers, and you had your militia. They were Ralph Waldo Emerson’s “embattled farmers.”
Armed with their squirrel rifles, they stood up to a tyrant and an enemy with superior numbers and training. That’s far different from a nut-case writing a manifesto, choosing a “target of opportunity,” then murdering and maiming dozens of unarmed people who have done nothing wrong, except to be at school or at the store.
So what about parents’ rights to send their children to a school where they won’t die in a hail of lead? What about the rights of an Asian person or an LGBTQ person or a member of a particular religious group to move about freely without looking over their shoulders to see who is going to suddenly go postal?
What about the right I’ve had for my 70-plus years to live without feeling intimidated by people wearing body armor and brandishing deadly weapons?
Geoffrey Stafford
Keauhou
What are we doing?
Industry has been quick to meet the demands for products to keep our children safe.
Take a stroll down the children’s and babies’ aisles at a local department store. There you see the most durable, accident-withstanding car seats and strollers, safety-tested high-chairs, sleep-correct mattresses and beds to prevent SIDS, nursery intercom systems and cameras, child safety bottle tops, inspected seal-of-approval child carriers, certified bike helmets and, of course, the best gas-preventing baby bottle nipples and the purest of the pure baby foods.
With gunshot wounds as the leading cause of death in children, it will not be long before the best bulletproof vests, in sizes from toddler to preteen, will join the items in the children’s back-to school aisle, and the new bulletproof stroller will be top on the baby shower list of our mothers-to-be. The new items will probably be offered in pastel colors.
What are we doing!? What are we waiting for to stop these tragedies?
Barbara Feliciano Pinkerton
Waimea
