Take the Toys from the Boys

If the time has come to repeal the Second Amendment so be it. This atavistic relic of a less civilized age is not worth the carnage it imposes daily on American life. The Constitution countenanced slavery; modern society has outlawed it, albeit at great cost. The time has come to outlaw guns.

There is a spurious reasonableness to the argument that Americans need guns. Even strong advocates of controls kowtow before the "right" of Americans to engage in blood sports. Why we outlaw dog fighting but not deer hunting is a mystery to me. (If starving families in Appalachia depend on hunting to survive, I am sure exceptions could be made.) By and large, however, hunters engaged in the practice of gunning down defenseless animals in the name of so-called "sport" should be unabashedly labeled what it is - "barbaric."

As for the self-defense argument, it is both circular and spurious. Circular because there would be little pretext for owning guns if we were not so afraid of our neighbors who presumably have them. Spurious because gun ownership is largely unavailing for self-defense, particularly in the hands of the largely ill-trained and unprepared American civilian population. As Michael Moore so aptly pointed out, owning five guns did not help Nancy Lanza. (And it is very little exculpation that guns are owned in quantity in sociopathic backwaters such as Texas (whose oft-expressed desire to secede should perhaps be given greater consideration)).