Ted Nugent's Gun Policy is About as Good as his Music

My response to Ted Nugents theory that gun-free zones invite murderers:
http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/04/19/commentary.nugent/index.html


Why is it that every gun nut tires to justify gun ownership by saying if everyone had a gun then they could shoot any perpetrator who, get this, HAS A GUN. The problem isn’t that the Virginia Tech students were in a “gun free zone” and were unarmed, the problem is that Cho was legally armed. I know the 2nd Amendment, in plain English, says that every 22 year old non-citizen college student with a history of mental illness has the right to carry automatic weapons capable of killing 30 people in under 2 minutes but how practical is that and is that what our founding fathers intended? As with the 1st Amendment, our freedoms guaranteed in the Constitution are not absolute. I don’t have the right to yell fire in a crowded theater, nor do I have the right to slander someone or have a business that refuses to hire Jews for instance. No right winger would ever say that the freedom of expression allows us to have access to child show porn or broadcast swear words on Saturday morning network TV. Why? Because child porn or someone like Andrew Dice Clay aren’t scenarios that our founding fathers could have foreseen. If they can agree on that, and any liberal would cede those points, why can’t they realize that another amendment, the right to bear arms, has limitations and that the arms today are very different from the type of armaments that were common back when the 2nd Amendment was written. John Hancock could have never envisioned a weapon that could fire 1200 armor piercing rounds per minute or a gun that could kill 30 people in a minute and a half, just as he couldn’t have envisioned child porn as some sort of artistic freedom of expression and child porn is illegal.

Why was the 2nd Amendment written? It wasn’t so gun nuts could extend their ego, it wasn’t even really for hunting or personal protection. "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." So what they are saying is: We don’t want British troops forcing their way into our houses and we have no real formidable army so we are going to depend on the average citizen to protect the country against invaders. Even if that speech wasn’t there, what was considered and armament in 1787 when the Bill of Rights was added to the Constitution, was very different from what we have today. Muskets were the most common type of armament and had a rate of fire of 2 or 3 inaccurate rounds per minute at a range of 30-100 yards. The Colt revolver was introduced 48 years later, the Gatling Gun in 1862 and the Winchester Rifle wasn’t even introduced until 1873.
Don’t try to say that more guns make us safer. If more guns made you safer then the United States would be one of the safest countries on Earth. Countries with strict gun control laws like Japan are indeed the safest countries on the planet. I would also like to point out that there are more handguns in Detroit than there are people and look at the city’s crime rate. Almost everyone in Baghdad has a gun and 20-40 people a day are killed in that city. So, the old saying that a criminal is less likely to rob you if there is a possibility that you may have a gun doesn't really hold much water.

I would like to have seen what the police would have gone through if they would have pulled up to the VT campus with reports of gunfire and walk into a classroom with 4 bodies on the ground and 10 people standing up holding hand guns; how are they supposed to figure out who the victims or attackers are? And what if another legally armed student down the hall hears gun fire and runs into the classroom with his gun to save lives and sees dead bodies and guns drawn; who does he shoot? When he shoots who he believes to be the attacker how are the other students with guns to know if this guy is part of the plot or someone trying to help? Bullets move fast but adolescent minds don’t. The entire campus could have gone erupted into a mini civil war if everyone had a shoot first, ask later approach like Mr. Nugent is advocating.

Bottom line is that the Virginia Tech tragedy could not have happened with a knife, nor could have the diner shooting in Texas or Columbine. No kid on a swing set has ever been caught in the cross-fire of a drive by gang stabbing.

As with Chicago gun laws, allowing citizens to own a shotgun which can fire five rounds per minute and are not easily concealable is honoring the 2nd Amendments request by allowing citizens to arm themselves. By allowing that, no one can say they aren’t allowed to “bare arms”. The 2nd says you can bare arms, not any and all arms. A SCUD missile is an arm and I think everyone can agree that John Hancock never intended Ted Nugent to own a SCUD missile battery.

I am a firm believer in what the Constitution has to say, let's just not forget that it never said anyone and everyone has the right to any killing machine available.