Obama Photo and Character of the Debate

02/02/2013


In the heat of a national debate that has been on the hearts of many Americans nearly two months after the fatal shooting in Newton Connecticut, a somewhat purposeful photograph of President Obama has circulated news sites recently. They say that a picture is worth a thousand words and this image seems to identify the stance that the White House intends to achieve over the contentious debate between gun control advocates and ideological extremists who hope to preserve all aspects of ownership rights. Obama's stance has been that of which is to be perceived as the only sensible position on a very important issue that influences the message sent about our nation's safety. The ban on such high powered assault and semi automatic weapons had for a time removed them from the open market following the attack at Columbine High School in 1994 but only to be made legal again when the lawsphoto expired in the midst of a Republican congressional majority in 2004. The objective presently in the White House is to bring about a similarly assertive ban that will be made permanent.

Unfortunately no certainty that the ocurrences in which the legislation is intended to protect against won't ever happen again but nonetheless their is no humane reason that these destructive firearms should remain accessible to the public. The instantaneous harm that can be done upon many innocent people by a deranged lunatic is too great of a risk to go ignored by maintaining the availability of such deadly weapons.

The second "amendment" which for clarity's sake should be verbally reiterated, "amendment," as it is an addendum to the original grander construct of our constitution which was meant to lay out the explicit function of our government's structure. The amendments offer individual protections but don't comprise the entirety of our founding document which rather set the premise under which our country would be governed for a long time to come. So reading the second amendment which in relation to the overall Constitution is a mere snippet of the entire document but which nonetheless holds a strong meaning for our freedom and liberty just as of the other original fourteen amendments do. In it's one sentence, it explicitly defines that in the interest of a state with a well regulated militia that one should not have their right to bear arms infringed upon. This meaning is a reflection on the protection of one's homeland and country against what at the time in 1776 primarily concerned protection against an aggressor foreign nation more than anything else. The interpretation that has become so irrationally adopted by the NRA and other hard core gun rights activists is so skewed from what the intention of the authors ever would have possibly imagined.

Society at the time was still a century away from modernization and at a time where one of the few crimes that might have occurred with any regularity was theft. Even so, would be criminals were mostly overcome by such fear of the consequences of being caught which risked being shot at was reason enough to keep such incidents at a minimum. So trying to apply an objective understanding of the literalness of a sentence written by eighteenth century settlers makes no contextual sense to today's world of crime, technological innovation and an advanced legal system.

No other countries experience near the level of violent crime that occurs in the United States. Gun incidents are such a startling endemic here that we hardly flinch when hearing the all too often reports on the local news of victims being the result of an inhumane individual's provocation with a gun. While it's true that simply banning the high powered guns that can easily reap horrible devastation when placed into the hands of wrongful minds likely won't immediately prevent the lingering threat. It will at least set an important example genuinely felt by the majority of our country that such incidents have no place in a functioning society that prides itself as being the most advanced and admired of many nations.

So to call attention to the severity of these increasing incidents of violence, action needs to be taken to set the tone that our country won't tolerate the idea of someone aligning their interests with the destruction that these weapons can produce. The sport of using rifles is something that does hold a national significance for America that by no means is being infringed upon by the sensible legislation that a majority of Congress is pushing to enact. And in reflecting upon the photograph of our democratically elected president securely gripping a stock and barrel after firing at a clay skeet at rural Camp David, appropriately epitomizes the place that such weapons occupy for our place in society.

They are to be owned and operated by responsible adults or arguably supervised teenagers who have the proper awareness to utilize such a device for adequate purposes such as seasonal hunting or mature recreational hobbies. It's no more of an infringement upon a personal freedom to tell someone that their prohibited from owning a gun of an extreme capacity that poses no other purpose than endangerment to others than it is to mandate car owners to obey speed limits.

So as this legislative discussion continues, it should stand to highlight the national problem of non substantiated brands of high powered weapons having no place in the hands of civilians who possess no rightful purpose for them. To reiterate the conversation that's been voiced regarding the picture of Obama and his comments recently in an interview with the New Republic Magazine, he said, "at Camp David, we do skeet shooting all the time. And I have a profound respect for the traditions of hunting that trace back in this country for generations."

That offers a meaningful stance on how to unravel the absurdity posed by those dissenters of gun control. It's inevitable that our nation will be a stronger example for the rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness that we so valiantly profess by encouraging sensible legislation on this issue to be enacted.


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