Your Turn: This can’t be what the founders had in mind – SC Times

Anthony Akubue| St. Cloud

The tragedy of mass shooting and killing of innocent children and adults has become a regular occurrence and increasingly becoming what our country is associated with worldwide. With each mass shooting that occurs, there is this display of simulated acrimonious debates in the U.S. Senate and House, which then peters out to naught until the next mass shooting. Whither is the beacon of democracy bound and are our politicians purposely dividing our great nation and complicit in the erosion of Abraham Lincolns government of the people, by the people, for the people?

It seems that we the ordinary citizens have become the unsuspecting dupes of politicians whose priority is to retain power. What is it about reasonable gun control that defies understanding? What are the real reasons politicians are enabling us to arm ourselves to the teeth with combat-style assault rifles? This recklessness and irresponsibility conjures up the specter of something calamitous in the offing. Sadly, I see our great country on a trajectory of self-implosion because we insist on hating and detest peaceful coexistence with each other. It does seem we would rather perish together as fools than learn to live together as brother and sisters.

President Eisenhower warned that …we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex; noting that The potential for disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.

President Reagan remarked that there is no reason why on the street today a citizen should be carrying a loaded weapon. He also observed that politics is supposed to be the second-oldest profession, but added that he has come to realize that it now bears a very close resemblance to the first.

Why are our politicians condoning citizens perambulating the streets with combat-type assault rifles? Is it because it is constitutional? Is it what the Second Amendment to the United States Constitution is all about? The Second Amendment says that A well-regulated militiabeing necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.

Me and my ignorant self, I dont even know what that statement means; however, I think I know what it doesnt mean in todays reality. It doesnt mean granting private citizens/civilians the same privilege to keep and bear combat-type assault rifles as our men and women in the armed forces protecting and defending our country and citizens against foreign aggression and invasion.

Ours is not a milieu requiring us to be at alert and on guard because the British are coming. Today, one would correctly interpret the people in the Second Amendment as the men and women of the United States armed forces. Of course, the Second Amendment grants our civilian populace the right to keep and bear firearms, but not the AK-47 combat rifles and their ilk. I can imagine the people keeping and bearing muskets in the 18th century, the type Eli Whitney assembled in minutes before Congress with standardized interchangeable parts. These are not automatic or semiautomatic rifles owned by citizens in that era.

How is the man who first shoots his grandmother and then proceeds to Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, with an AR-15 rifle to kill 19 children, two adults, and wounding others on May 24, 2022, defending himself or his home? AR-15 is definitely not Eli Whitneys musket.

The scary thing is that the frequency of mass shooting is increasing, not decreasing. The mass shooting on South Street in Philadelphia Saturday, June 5, 2022, which killed three people and inflicting 11 with major injuries, was the ninth mass shooting in the city of Philadelphia this year already. The worse thing is that it appears we are becoming numb to gruesome cases of mass shooting in our country as political charlatans and demagogues spew incendiary speeches that divide us.

We may choose to hate and detest peaceful co-existence with each other, but like it or not, we are stuck together for the long haul. I dont know why Frank Leahy remarked that egotism is the anesthetic that dulls the pain of stupidity, but may God help us all!

This is the opinion of St. Cloud residentAnthonyAkubue. Submit a Your Turn of your own by emailing it to columns@stcloudtimes.com.

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Your Turn: This can't be what the founders had in mind - SC Times