In a 5-4 vote, the United States Supreme Court ruled that an individual does have a Constitutional right to own a firearm. They ruled also that the Di$trict of Corruption (District of Columbia) ban on firearms is unconstitutional. It's about time.
Folks, I'll be the first to admit that many crimes are committed while using a firearm. A person walks into a store brandishing a firearm and demands money. Another person brandishes a firearm and robs somebody on the street of his or her money.
These are crimes ... of that there is no doubt. But who committed the crime? Did the firearm commit the crime, or did the person who used it?
In other words, if I set my firearm down on the table, what does it do? Does the firearm get up, dust itself off, and then grow arms and legs and go out and rob somebody? We live, as most physicists now believe, in a MULTI-verse in which our universe is but one of many. So there might be a universe out there where the firearm really can grow arms and legs and go out and rob somebody. But in this universe, it can't happen.
Firearms, in my opinion, don't kill people. People kill people. Yes, people do use firearms while committing crimes. They also use knives. People have been injured and even killed with sharpened spoons. People have brandished spoons, forks, sporks, knives, sticks, indeed all manner of objects in the course of committing a crime. Convicts, as shown on Mythbusters, have used paper to construct a crossbow and shoot corrections officers.
But think of it this way: Let's say that I have a bullet in my hand. (I don't, for the record.) I point this hypothetical bullet at somebody and demand their money. They'd think I was crazy, right? Pointing a bullet at somebody without a firearm, after all, is pretty useless. The bullet isn't going to do anything by itself. Indeed, if I were to place a bullet on the table next to the firearm, they'd just sit there. The bullet might roll a bit depending on how and where I set it down, but that's all.
They become dangerous objects in the hands of people. If I were to place that bullet into the magazine or the chamber of the firearm and then take said weapon and brandish it at somebody while demanding their money, that is where they become dangerous.
It took, in this hypothetical instance, a person ... me ... to pick up said firearm and use it to commit a crime. In this case, yes, the firearm is dangerous.
Firearms can be dangerous in the hands of children. People have been injured and killed while mishandling firearms. But if you treat a firearm with respect, your chances of being injured or killed drop ... unless somebody were to rob you while using one.
Did you get the point? "...unless somebody were to rob you while using one." (emphasis added) It takes a person to make the firearm commit the crime. Indeed, the person used the firearm to commit the crime. The person committed the crime while using a firearm. But the person committed the crime, not the firearm.
While I was still married, my now ex-wife and I had a discussion about this. She cited the 2nd amendment to make her case. "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." (emphasis added)
She made her case on the militia part of the amendment in that the right to own a firearm should be tied to service in a state militia.
I'm glad that the Justices didn't agree with that.
There is no doubt that firearms, when used by people, have been used to injure and kill people. But the firearms did not do so by themselves. People did.
It's easy to blame the object being used, not the person that commits the crime. Let's take another example: Jack the Ripper.
He murdered prostitutes in England in the autumn of 1888. (A well-written article about him can be found here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_The_Ripper) But in his horrific crimes, what did he use?
Well, we do know of one instance in which he used a knife. Was the knife, then, responsible for those women being murdered? Or was the person who murdered them? A knife, after all, would simply lay there on the table next to the firearm and the bullet. It wouldn't grow arms and legs and go out and slash somebody. At least, not in this universe.
People commit crimes. They use a variety of weapons to do so, but people themselves commit the crimes.
As I said, it's easy to blame the firearm, the knife, the spork, the stick. Let's not do that anymore. Let's blame the people who commit the crime, not the tools they use.
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