Guns Do Kill People and Other Obvious Thoughts From a True-Blue Conservative

If you must label me, you'd think of me as a Libertarian.  I'm an Originalist in terms of our Constitution, meaning I believe in interpreting the Constitution with original intent in mind while carefully and thoughtfully considering the times in which we live (ie. slavery may have been all well and good in 1787, but it doesn't quite go over in 2013).

I passionately believe that less government is best government. And I firmly support our right to bear arms, as well as any other right afforded to us as US citizens. I have been a card carrying member of the NRA. Not to mention, my girls have been trained on proper firearm usage and go to the gun range on a regular basis.

However! Our 2nd Amendment rights are NOT absolute and unlimited. The Constitution does not exist in a vacuum folks. I'm so tired of seeing the sentiment illustrated in this picture along with all of the other social media chatter about 'protecting our gun rights'. At any cost?? Really? Listen up Conservatives; you are being intellectually dishonest. Not to mention, ignorant. You are making us (I consider myself more conservative than most) appear like looney-tune, end-of-dayers that live up in the hills with their food storage cache and gun arsenal.

Do I really need to be Captain Obvious? I think the answer is 'yes' unfortunately. Here in the US, roughly 12% of all weapon related, violent crimes are committed using a gun. About 10% are knife related. Well below, to the point of being negligible, are bomb or (duh) car related. Of course it's not the GUNS fault,  but clearly guns are more of an issue than bombs or cars correct?

There is one through-line; human beings. We are the issue. Some people are bad. We need to deal with the bad people and make reasonable attempts to create sound rules and consequences for a civilized society that do not restrict the Constitutional freedoms of the individual. That means we need to come to the table, listen to all sides, and compromise. Yes, compromise. We the people CAN do that. Politicians won't, but we still can if we stop the rhetoric, stop blindly agreeing with out-dated arguments, and think for ourselves. 2nd Amendment rights are not holy.

Think about it.