Let there be no mistake. I am against private citizens owning and using firearms of all types. I would like the U.S. to be more like Japan in that sense. Few remember how we imposed this on the Japanese after the war. But that genie is already out of the bottle and there is no re-corking. It is a reality I am forced to accept. What was behind thinking behind the NRA and its hijacking and distortion of the Second Amendment, I cannot imagine. There is no Constitutional originalist mandate for owning and using firearms in this country. This is a twisting of the Second Amendment by the gun lobby, its deluded supporters, and is bolstered by the Supreme Court, who, unfortunately, is the final arbiter in the matter. Or are they?
Who is to say that the issue is settled and that guns will be with Americans from here on. Is there no re-thinking or re-framing of the matter. Considering the amount of gun violence and suicide in this country, one cannot just give up trying to change people's minds. Most Americans are clearly deluding themselves with the Second Amendment argument. It is only self-righteousness and fear that make people cling to their weapons. But it is also flawed thinking and a bit of Emperors New Clothes that prevent a rational debate from re-arising.
Steven Pinker wrote in The Better Angels of Our Nature, "People can not only overcome their revulsion in cahoots with their peers, they can become sadists. And people can avow a belief they don't hold because they think everyone else avows it; such beliefs can sweep through a closed society and bring it under the spell of a collective delusion." This is what is occurring in the questionable reasoning of gun advocates and the twisting of the Second Amendment.
Professor Pinker is a Harvard Psychologist, thinker, and writer. His book, mentioned above, talks about our culture's penchant for violence, but also shows how that violence is slowing abating, by slow, civilizing means. He quotes studies, shows graphs explaining principles and annotates everything. It is quite a slog to get through this tome, but for any thinking person who wants the trend of declining violence to continue, necessary reading.
To continue my thought above, the emperor's nakedness is the mass delusion of the Second Amendment encouraging people to have and use guns on an every day basis. This lunacy is clearly out of line with peaceful coexistence and the better principles of civilization. The rest of the "First World" knows this and recoils at our gun culture. Wake up folks and take another look at this whole line of thinking.
