{"id":33267,"date":"2018-11-05T01:38:56","date_gmt":"2018-11-05T01:38:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=33267"},"modified":"2018-11-05T01:38:56","modified_gmt":"2018-11-05T01:38:56","slug":"gun-control-gun-owners-rights-not-mutually-exclusive","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=33267","title":{"rendered":"Gun control, gun-owners&#8217; rights: not mutually exclusive"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<div class=\"twitter-share\"><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?via=jkanelis\" class=\"twitter-share-button\">Tweet<\/a><\/div>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/10\/photo-1.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-medium wp-image-33129\" src=\"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/10\/photo-1-300x224.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"224\" srcset=\"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/10\/photo-1-300x224.jpg 300w, https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/10\/photo-1-768x574.jpg 768w, https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/10\/photo-1.jpg 1023w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>When the shooter blasted his way through Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., on Valentine&#8217;s Day, the debate over gun control erupted.<\/p>\n<p>When another shooter massacred those worshipers at Tree of Life synagogue just the other day, the gun control debate has barely scored a blip.<\/p>\n<p>What&#8217;s up here? Don&#8217;t tell me the issue is dead and buried. It&#8217;s not.<\/p>\n<p>The Tree of Life loon opened fire with an AR-15 semi-auto rifle, killing 11 Jewish congregants in what&#8217;s being called a hate crime. It is similar to an M-16 military rifle, with this exception: The M-16 has a switch that can make it a <em>fully automatic machine gun<\/em>; the AR-15 doesn&#8217;t have it.<\/p>\n<p>I happen to believe in the Second Amendment, the one that says a citizen&#8217;s right to &#8220;keep and bear Arms shall not be infringed.&#8221; That all said and understood, I do not believe that the right to keep and bear arms precludes reasonable gun control legislation that keeps faith with the Second Amendment.<\/p>\n<p>I few gun control legislation and gun owners&#8217; rights the same way I view the biblical theory of creation and the theory of evolution. Neither the biblical version of Earth&#8217;s creation or Charles Darwin&#8217;s evolutionary notion are mutually exclusive \u2026 if you conclude &#8212; as I do &#8212; that Earth wasn&#8217;t created in six calendar days.<\/p>\n<p>The Second Amendment has wiggle room within it, I believe, to allow for legislation that makes it more difficult for criminals or those with emotional or mental issues to acquire a firearm. Those so-called impediments to &#8220;law-abiding citizens'&#8221; rights need not apply if the legislation is applied and enforced strictly.<\/p>\n<p>Yet the gun-owners-rights lobby argues that the Second Amendment, as it was written in the late 18th century, is sacrosanct. It is virtually the holy word, much like the Bible. Don&#8217;t mess with it in any fashion, they say.<\/p>\n<p>I will argue that if there <em>is<\/em> a sacrosanct amendment to the U.S. Constitution, it isn&#8217;t the Second \u2026 it&#8217;s the <em>First Amendment.\u00a0<\/em>Religious freedom, the right to express one&#8217;s views and a free press must not be trifled with.<\/p>\n<p>The Second Amendment doesn&#8217;t take into account the evolution of weaponry since the time that the founders wrote it.<\/p>\n<p>I am never going to call for the <em>abolition<\/em> of the Second Amendment, I continue to believe it can be amended, improved and made more reasonable &#8212; while keeping faith with its pledge to permit firearm ownership to U.S. citizens.<\/p>\n\n<div class=\"twitter-share\"><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?via=jkanelis\" class=\"twitter-share-button\">Tweet<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>When the shooter blasted his way through Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., on Valentine&#8217;s Day, the debate over gun control erupted. When another shooter massacred those worshipers at Tree of Life synagogue just the other day, the gun control debate has barely scored a blip. What&#8217;s up here? Don&#8217;t tell me the &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=33267\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Gun control, gun-owners&#8217; rights: not mutually exclusive<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[1738,2025,2032,2037,3342,4169,5043],"class_list":["post-33267","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-national-news","tag-first-amendment","tag-gun-control","tag-gun-owners-rights","tag-gun-violence","tag-nra","tag-second-amendment","tag-us-constitution"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33267","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=33267"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33267\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":33268,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33267\/revisions\/33268"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=33267"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=33267"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=33267"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}