The Liberty To Take Liberties

No matter how young, how innocent, how reckless, or how insensible, the insatiable freedom to the right to bear arms is absolutely flawed

The unsound reasoning surrounding the 2nd Amendment and its democratic exploitation knows no bounds

Let’s face this, we have become all too inured to gun violence — even to mass shootings in schools — to do anything to protect ourselves from ourselves.

I will continue to pray, meditate, chant and supplicate for rational and collective soul searching as we address the more recent spates of liberty-taking under the auspice of liberty. In particular the liberty of stockpiling and sporting what merely is defined as weaponry, artillery, or armament. There is no mistaking the potential harm. It is a possession of power and advantage harmful in the hands of those with just a smidgen of fear, apprehension or misapprehension, anger, despair and or distress.

The power of a gun can be overwhelming. The allure and the ease to point, shoot, maim, kill, is resolute. Final. The adrenaline rush of absolute control in a blind rage. Multiply that by the millions and you have an armed society, reverted back to the days of the lawless old west. A time when exploration, removal of native peoples and succession led to expansion into new frontiers of the United States that brought forth an age of incivility as an incessant, conquest and survival was the order of those days. What is the manifest destiny of today?

All 20 of the children and all 6 of the adults took a minimum of two rounds in the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre on Friday, December 14, 2012. You have no chance when you are confronted with such liberty-taking. We really need to reevaluate American values. kp

I wrote that in December of 2012. It is being revisited again upon reports of another senseless massacre, this time at a campus in Oregon. This repeat tragedy is eerily grim knowing that perpetrators of deadly violence like this are oftentimes stricken with self-esteem issues. Appropriate and balanced levels of self-esteem are not only essential to survival but also provides a strong enough buffer against anxieties that incur homicidal tendencies for wreaking havoc and malevolence for carnage. Those anxieties are further amplified with the ease and access of dangerous weapons. Could we have stood together in the past to mitigate the loss of life today? Absolutely.

I wrote that in October of 2015.

The young lives lost in Parkland, Florida on Valentines Day, no doubt, represents a continuation of absurd governance based on an impractical idealization of American values. There is also this meretricious cultural sentimentality that not only blurs but glamorizes the owner, the shooter, or assailant, as a valiant equalizer with accessory to match.

The National Rifle Association has called the AR-15 the “most popular rifle in America” and estimates Americans own more than 8 million of them.

The NRA said “the AR-15 has soared in popularity” because it’s “customizable, adaptable, reliable and accurate.” It is also versatile and can be used for “sport shooting, hunting and self-defense situations,” the NRA said, adding the ability to “personalize” so many of the rifle’s components “is one of the things that makes it so unique.”

We simply cannot continue to make tools specific to violence and murder an alternative so easily and readily accessible that it has become ubiquitous and unsuspecting. We cannot continue to allow for the silent peddling of civilian anarchy that contribute to this kind of terrorism. We have to decide once and for all that we cannot continue to live like this.

Americans have made a hazardous choice to exploit the 2nd Amendment as some personal freedom, a liberty-taking exercise — that is unfettered through capitalism at an astounding human cost. These tragedies, gun advocacy, the NRA’s false exoneration of gun use and its proliferation, is profoundly an irrational circular logic of defensive and offensive motives and or intentions, none of which are a persuasive justification for the resulting outcomes of incivility and the loss of life.