Restrict cruel and unusual punishment of pedophiles, and the media will support you. Provide a homicidal maniac trial by jury and afford him due process and the media will sensationalize you. Throw out a criminal case when incriminating evidence was found without probable cause, and the media will badger the police force (and then idolize your wisdom). Each of these processes, afforded by constitutional amendments, protect U.S. citizens from corruption, savagery, and police-state actions... a model of an intellectual judicial body... brilliant legislation crafted by our founding fathers and grounded in the Bill of Rights of our Constitution (the Bill of Rights refer to the first ten amendments of the U.S. Constitution and were ratified nearly two and half years after the original signing of the Constitution, 1789 & 1791 respectively).
Politicians, Pundits, and Popular Media appear to support the judiciary unequivocally when issues of humanity, justice, and legal fairness are concerned. Perhaps you're familiar with these common legal protections, but do you remember where they come from? Here are a few examples: protection from unreasonable search and seizure without probable cause (4th amendment)... protection from self-incrimination and the right to due process (5th amendment)... the right to trial by jury (6th amendment)... protection against cruel and unusual punishment (8th amendment).
These protections don't represent whimsical humanitarian aims or progressive legislative adaptations. Instead, these amendments represent impressive foresight by our founding fathers over 220 years ago to legislatively prohibit certain legal processes that if left to corrupt actors may perpetuate brutal and unfair treatment of U.S. citizens. Popularly, the country agrees that such amendments deserve full support and judicial commitment. We believe that a judiciary left to its own devices (unbound by legislative protocol) may be coerced by extortion, special interests, or political power... resulting in justice brokered at a price, a favor, or a particular bias. The citizens of this country know this because we see this type of endemic corruption in the legal systems of Russia, China, and Central America (to name a few). Hence, we support with sobering awareness the amendments that protect us from a corrupt legal system.
Yet, when it comes to issues of free speech (1st amendment) and gun ownership (2nd amendment), our country cowers in the corner of the legal tool shed looking for a one-size-fits-all device to permit or abolish these constitutionally expressed rights. The controversies brew and sensitivities turn emotional rather than intellectual (or even legal).
Freedom of speech and public expression go without provocation until "God" is spoken, written, or evoked. A Nativity scene constructed to celebrate Christmas but placed on a privately owned residential thoroughfare agitates an atheist family... a public school offers a moment for prayer which is replaced by a school-wide "moment of silence" and is eventually prohibited altogether because students observed praying during the "moment of silence" may offend those that don't believe in it... the U.S. pledge of allegiance adds "God" ("one nation under God"), remains intact for over 50 years, and continues to be recited in U.S. public schools... yet, now the pledge is rarely recited in public schools, "God" is not typically mentioned, and students no longer have to stand or place their hands on their hearts while "optionally" participating in the pledge.
Furthermore, the country untethers itself from more provocative public speech delivered on nationally syndicated TV networks like CBS, NBC, ABC, which now permit words like "damn"and "bitch" to be used in primetime sitcoms and TV shows. Yet, we polarize when expressions of God, Jesus, or religious faith are expressed on these same networks. We concern about the humanity of our criminal trials and legal punishment, but marginalize the importance of our right to free speech. With moral repugnance, atheist activists, secular media networks, and manipulative progressive politicians, make every expression of God appear like a public establishment of religion thereby prohibited by the first amendment. These tactics unfortunately prove effective, transformative, and contagious.
The constitutionally expressed right to bear arms takes cover from a barrage of intellectually insignificant attacks. The politically liberal trinity of special interest groups, secular media, and progressive politicians, shallowly narrow the scope of this second amendment debate (see a previous writing on this site for a specific, statistical comparison of firearms homicides in the U.S. with other annual U.S. fatalities, http://platoandpopculture.blogspot.com/2012/12/connecticut-challenging-view-on.html). School shootings and maniacally contrived homicides stir panic in the citizenry. Perpetuating fear and arousing executive intervention, the White House seeks to consolidate greater federal power at the expense of our individual liberties. Focus deviates to the poles... sensational exceptions to responsible gun ownership populate media headlines and deceive the ill-informed. The ignorance proves painful... emotionally charged rhetoric dumbs our society like an episode of Jersey Shore.
Seriously, have you heard of a sensible solution to crazy people killing sane people? Take the guns away? That really works. NOT! We couldn't successfully take away alcohol during prohibition (and who was that killing?), how are we going to take away guns? The Vice President is meeting with video game makers to prevent the production of violent video games. Yet, we will condone "bitch" and "damn" on public television? The moral compass seems pretty selective to me.
As previously written on this site ("Connecticut: A Challenging View on Political Agenda"), America's first and second amendment arms her citizens with essential tools to protect herself from dictatorship. Sound radical? Read about German government prior to Hitler's rise of Naziism. The country seems pretty normal until a decaying economic system and an impoverished people are swept up in an unchecked, violent national overthrow. No need to rehash the end of that story... not pretty.
America's revolutionary independence from an abusive colonizer inspired constitutional rights that would prevent such oppression from enslaving its people again. The right to free speech empowers our individual intellectualism. Our right to bear arms strengthens our individual might. Together, the right to free speech and bear arms promotes significant individual brain and brawn, which no violent governmental movement could suppress.
Some have focused on specific solutions to preventing mass atrocities such as the recent school shootings and large-area homicides. While these talks encourage future prevention of heinous acts, I argue that collective (or individual) think tanks on these subjects will generate very little public inertia. This is because progressive politicians and media networks don't really care about isolated incidents and the solutions that may remedy their occurrences. The CDC reports that more people die annually by accidental falls than from firearms, yet politicians aren't boycotting ladders, bridges, and cliff sides.
This debate remains impassioned by emotion and not intellect... fueled by special interest and not realistic interest. The battlefield for our 2nd Amendment right means more than finding a way to sensibly restrict guns from bad people, employ more adequate tactics for suppressing mass shootings, or delivering ultimatums on the size and scope of our firearms and munitions. If such decisions were decentralized to the individual (municipality or state), then the individual would institute an environmentally reasonable constraint (or prevention) on the sale, use, or criminality of firearms. Humans always find ways to individually secure their own safety, shelter, and belongings.
The real war is not of guns and God. Instead, we battle the ideology that ensues a lack of either. Our founding fathers appeared to have known this... capable of true intuition and respectably aware of the tyranny that oppresses a defenseless, voiceless people. They seem to warn us: permit the government to take your guns today, they will take your due process tomorrow... if they take your God today, you'll suffer cruel and unusual punishment tomorrow.
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