Monday, October 2, 2017

The Nevada Massacre



The massacre of over 50 people in a Nevada hotel by one man with an automatic rifle is due entirely to the Nevada gun laws or lack thereof. Nevada has some of the most relaxed gun laws in the United States. Firearm owners there are not required to have a license, and do not have to register their weapons. The state does not prohibit the sale of assault rifles, and places no limits on the number of firearms an individual can possess and the capacity of ammunition magazines.
The second amendment to the US Constitution states: "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." Since there are no longer any militias in this country as in the days when the US Constitution was being written, this clearly does not allow people to "keep and bear arms" as was interpreted by the Supreme Court in 2008 in the Heller decision and is used by the right wing as justification for the unlimited ownership of guns in this country.
This however was not the worst Supreme Court decision in our history. That goes to the Dred Scott decision in 1857 by the Taney Court. It has been said that this decision was characterized by "convoluted logic, tortured misreadings of key constitutional provisions, contempt of precedent, distortion of history, and judicial activism on a world-historical scale". It led eventually to the Civil War.
The Heller decision has led to the modern day gun lobby headed by the National Rifle Association or NRA and to this country being the most violent civilized country in the world. The NRA has not yet made its normal soothing statements about the holy American gun rights after the Nevada massacre, since it must first wash the blood off its hands.
Guns must be banned from our country as is the case in England and every other civilized country. There will be enough death and destruction in our country and in the world as climate warming gets worse, but the absence of guns in private hands will decrease the killing of innocent people.

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