I just heard on TV that there’s not expected to be a ban on the use of assault weapons or the number of rounds allowed to be used in a magazine clip this year, the news coming just after learning that our first lady, Michelle Obama, had attended the funeral of Hadiya Pendleton, who sang at the presidential Inauguration, and who was shot and killed in a gang-related gun violence in a park close to the Obamas’ home on Chicago’s South Side.

Come on guys, when are we going to WAKE UP and realize what’s important in this life? Is it for civilians to be able to shoot at animals and targets using assault weapons which shoot more than a few rounds before it’s necessary to reload, or a human life? Granted, I don’t know whether or not an assault rifle killed Hadiya, or a single shot weapon took her life, a life of a person who had her whole life ahead of her, and who was shot down because of some SENSELESS KILLING. In either case, it was an act that should have and could have been avoided if that weapon was prevented from getting into the wrong hands. The message that we as a country are sending to ourselves and our world, when we permit assault weapons and semi-automatic weapons be part of the right to bear arms arsenal, is that to protect our Second Amendment right to bear arms, regardless what kind of fire arm is used, is more important than a human life.

In one of my earlier blogs, I mentioned how the Second Amendment, the Right to Bear Arms, when it was written in the 1700s, didn’t exactly apply to us today. That’s because our Founding Fathers felt there was a need for muskets to be in the hands of the countrymen, since there was no standing army and there may be a need to call up the militia in a “minutes” notice in order to repel any aggressor who may attack a community, or a state, or even the United 13 States, our nation.

Since the Second Amendment was never modified to fit the times, we have to live with that ill conceived decision not to modify it when the time was ripe to do so. That’s because we have to recognize that today it would be like “locking the barnyard door after the horses escaped,” since we have over 250 million guns, (a conservative estimate), in the hands of private gun owners today, consequently, it would be unrealistic to expect them to return all their guns to be confiscated. There’s just too many in people’s hands for that to happen. We have to do the next best thing, which is to OUTLAW assault weapons and semi-automatic weapons for use by the general public.

If the Founding Fathers wrote the Constitution today and realized that we do indeed have a standing army, and, if they could predict the NEEDLESS carnage that has taken place over the years, yes, here, in America, they would have followed their Constitutional dictates and banned for the general public employment, all weapons other than those used for hunting and recreational target practice. They would understand that by not doing so, they would have realized they had violated one of the major tenets of the Constitution, which is to protect the general welfare of our American citizens and to protect the people’s unalienable rights, as stated in the Declaration of Independence of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. (italics mine)