Search the Community

The latest shooting of 3 children on top of last weeks shooting of a girl at her school makes me wonder about the well known power of the Gun Lobby in the USA and its ability to scare the pants off politicians from even mentioning gun control. I did some research amongst the hundreds of thousands of sites dedicated to this subject, both pro and anti. Just too much to go into it here however one site that reports gun violence in the USA is worthy of showing to gauge the true level of gun violence related crimes in the USA. http://www.guardian.co.uk/usguns/0,,182056,00.html It seems never ending. As I understand it, when the Constitution was written and included the famous Second Amendment that states "every citizen has the right to bear arms" it was in the days of President Lincoln, and I guess it is obvious why it was included in those days. However this is 2006 and yet that clause in the Second Amendment remains today resulting with very little control in most states of the USA. Further there is doubt that this Amendment so often used by the pro gun lobby does in fact mean what they construe it to mean and I quote from a recent Senate debate - "Relative to the "bear arms" meanings, an extensive study found " ...that the overwhelming preponderance of usage of 300 examples of the "bear arms" expression in public discourse in early America was in an unambiguous, explicitly military context in a figurative (and euphemistic) sense to stand for military service"[33] Further, the Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles declares that a meaning of "to bear arms" is a figurative usage meaning "to serve as a soldier, do military service, fight". This study casts doubt on the modern definition of 'bear arms' to mean 'carry firearms'. In Amyette v. The State the court stated in 1840 that bear arms "has a military sense, and no other" etc. As late as last week a bill before the Senate was vetoed calling for the inclusion of child proof safety features on all guns, can you believe this? What say my fellow TF'ers on this issue, should the Constitution be amended to commence bringing in gun control so as to take out the one salient point that the pro gun lobby continuously uses to thwart gun control?