searcher451
Member
Mike Connell is a columnist for the Port Huron Times Herald, a small daily newspaper 60 miles north of Detroit. His column today is about the necessity of the 2nd Amendment, and he makes some excellent points for a guy who claims no great fascination for guns. It's nice to know that some folks get it. You might want to drop him a note and tell him what you think; his email is listed at the end of the column.
Here's what he had to say:
December 7, 2008
Connell: Americans have right to self-defense
I am not a gun collector or firearms fancier, and I've never felt a need to carry a concealed weapon. Guns, to use a trite phrase, don't float my boat.
With that said, I am a staunch supporter of the Second Amendment.
Part of this is pure pragmatism. I cherish the Bill of Rights, the bedrock of individual freedoms.
I know people who would gut the Second Amendment even though they claim to embrace the other nine amendments. What folly. It's rather like saying that except for a couple of murders, you live by the Ten Commandments.
To my way of thinking, those who would shoot down the Second Amendment are taking aim at all of our liberties, whether it is the right to a public trial before an impartial jury or the freedom to worship, or not to worship, as we choose.
Beyond that, I also am amused by those who argue the Second Amendment is ambiguous.
The entire amendment consists of a single sentence: "A well regulated Militia being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms shall not be infringed."
It may be shoddy writing, but it is not unclear. Anyone who learned to diagram sentences in grammar school should have no trouble identifying the subject and predicate.
The essence of the sentence is this: "The right shall not be infringed."
What could be clearer? The American people have a constitutional right to keep and bear arms.
Huron holocaust
The right of self-defense
must have seemed a no-brainer in 1789, when James Madison introduced the Bill of Rights.
America, after all, was a dangerous place.
The new republic had just fought a bloody war of independence. On the frontier, dueling warriors not only butchered each other, they also scalped women and enslaved children.
Indeed, Port Huron and Lake Huron are named for a nation that was all but exterminated in a 17th century holocaust.
The Huron, or Wyandot, allied themselves with the French and ultimately were crushed in a genocidal war with their British-backed cousins, the Iroquois.
War, or the fear of it, led to the settling of what is now Port Huron.
The French came first. In 1686, Duluth built the short-lived Fort St. Joseph to guard the gateway to Lake Huron during the Iroquois Wars.
More than a century later, during the War of 1812, the Americans built Fort Gratiot as an outpost on the northwestern frontier.
In those dangerous days, the right to guard yourself and your community was important enough to take second place among the amendments to the U.S. Constitution.
Croswell connection
The world remains a dangerous place, as we are reminded again and again.
Last week, it was former Sen. Bob Graham, D-Fla., who issued this dire warning: "Unless the world community acts decisively and with great urgency, it is more likely than not that a weapon of mass destruction will be used in a terrorist attack somewhere in the world by the end of 2013. ... Our margin of safety is shrinking, not growing."
Graham, who also served two terms as governor of Florida, is a member of an old Sanilac County family best known as the owners of The Washington Post.
In 1948, when he was 11 and in the sixth grade, Graham lived with his grandmother in Croswell for several months while his parents rebuilt their hurricane-damaged home in south Florida.
Today, he is chairman of the awkwardly named Commission on the Prevention of Weapons of Mass Destruction Proliferation and Terrorism. The nine-member panel was created by Congress at the urging of the 9/11 Commission.
Its findings are frightening, to say the least.
Graham and his colleagues have concluded that bioweapons may pose the most immediate threat to civilization. In part, that's because of poorly defended research labs.
"The nuclear age began with a mushroom cloud -- and, from that moment on, all those who worked in the nuclear industry in any capacity, military or civilian, understood they must work and live under a clear and undeniable security mandate," they wrote. "But the life sciences community has never experienced a comparable iconic event."
Their report goes on, "As DNA synthesis technology continues to advance at a rapid pace, it will soon become feasible to synthesize nearly any virus whose DNA sequence has been decoded -- such as the smallpox virus, which was eradicated from nature in 1977 -- as well as artificial microbes that do not exist in nature."
Did I mention: It is scary stuff?
Murderous simplicity
Equally scary is the Bombay attacks, where 10 gunmen murdered 145 civilians and 18 police officers in a 60-hour killing spree.
Bombay, or Mumbai as the wire services now call it, has taken its place on the grisly roll call of terror: 52 dead in the London subway bombings, 91 dead in the Madrid train attacks, 202 dead in the Bali bombings and 2,973 dead in the 9/11 hijackings.
What's especially worrisome about the Bombay massacre is its simplicity. John Timoney, the police chief of Miami, described it as little more than another Columbine, but with 10 suicidal maniacs instead of two.
"This (assault) was not sophisticated. It was not spectacular in that it did not involve planes or large bombs," Timoney said. "It was pretty crude, and that puts a new face on this kind of thing."
Sebastian D'Souza, an editor at a Bombay newspaper, watched the killers methodically shoot people in a crowded train station.
"There were armed policemen hiding all around the station, but none of them did anything," he reported. "At one point, I ran up to them and told them to use their weapons. I said, 'Shoot them, they're sitting ducks!' but they just didn't shoot back."
Founders got it right
Like it or not, it is difficult to imagine a similar scene in communities where law-abiding citizens can obtain permits to carry concealed weapons.
In Michigan, someone would have shot back.
It seems to me the Founding Fathers got it right. They obviously had no concept of designer viruses or dirty bombs, and the Second Amendment is no guarantee of protection from zealots who proselytize with hand grenades and AK-47s.
Still, the message of the amendment echoes over time: The world is and always will be a dangerous place. The people have an infrangible right to defend themselves.
Mike Connell is a freelance writer and a former Times Herald reporter. Contact him at [email protected].
Here's a link to the article:
http://www.thetimesherald.com/article/20081207/OPINION02/812070311&referrer=FRONTPAGECAROUSEL
Here's what he had to say:
December 7, 2008
Connell: Americans have right to self-defense
I am not a gun collector or firearms fancier, and I've never felt a need to carry a concealed weapon. Guns, to use a trite phrase, don't float my boat.
With that said, I am a staunch supporter of the Second Amendment.
Part of this is pure pragmatism. I cherish the Bill of Rights, the bedrock of individual freedoms.
I know people who would gut the Second Amendment even though they claim to embrace the other nine amendments. What folly. It's rather like saying that except for a couple of murders, you live by the Ten Commandments.
To my way of thinking, those who would shoot down the Second Amendment are taking aim at all of our liberties, whether it is the right to a public trial before an impartial jury or the freedom to worship, or not to worship, as we choose.
Beyond that, I also am amused by those who argue the Second Amendment is ambiguous.
The entire amendment consists of a single sentence: "A well regulated Militia being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms shall not be infringed."
It may be shoddy writing, but it is not unclear. Anyone who learned to diagram sentences in grammar school should have no trouble identifying the subject and predicate.
The essence of the sentence is this: "The right shall not be infringed."
What could be clearer? The American people have a constitutional right to keep and bear arms.
Huron holocaust
The right of self-defense
must have seemed a no-brainer in 1789, when James Madison introduced the Bill of Rights.
America, after all, was a dangerous place.
The new republic had just fought a bloody war of independence. On the frontier, dueling warriors not only butchered each other, they also scalped women and enslaved children.
Indeed, Port Huron and Lake Huron are named for a nation that was all but exterminated in a 17th century holocaust.
The Huron, or Wyandot, allied themselves with the French and ultimately were crushed in a genocidal war with their British-backed cousins, the Iroquois.
War, or the fear of it, led to the settling of what is now Port Huron.
The French came first. In 1686, Duluth built the short-lived Fort St. Joseph to guard the gateway to Lake Huron during the Iroquois Wars.
More than a century later, during the War of 1812, the Americans built Fort Gratiot as an outpost on the northwestern frontier.
In those dangerous days, the right to guard yourself and your community was important enough to take second place among the amendments to the U.S. Constitution.
Croswell connection
The world remains a dangerous place, as we are reminded again and again.
Last week, it was former Sen. Bob Graham, D-Fla., who issued this dire warning: "Unless the world community acts decisively and with great urgency, it is more likely than not that a weapon of mass destruction will be used in a terrorist attack somewhere in the world by the end of 2013. ... Our margin of safety is shrinking, not growing."
Graham, who also served two terms as governor of Florida, is a member of an old Sanilac County family best known as the owners of The Washington Post.
In 1948, when he was 11 and in the sixth grade, Graham lived with his grandmother in Croswell for several months while his parents rebuilt their hurricane-damaged home in south Florida.
Today, he is chairman of the awkwardly named Commission on the Prevention of Weapons of Mass Destruction Proliferation and Terrorism. The nine-member panel was created by Congress at the urging of the 9/11 Commission.
Its findings are frightening, to say the least.
Graham and his colleagues have concluded that bioweapons may pose the most immediate threat to civilization. In part, that's because of poorly defended research labs.
"The nuclear age began with a mushroom cloud -- and, from that moment on, all those who worked in the nuclear industry in any capacity, military or civilian, understood they must work and live under a clear and undeniable security mandate," they wrote. "But the life sciences community has never experienced a comparable iconic event."
Their report goes on, "As DNA synthesis technology continues to advance at a rapid pace, it will soon become feasible to synthesize nearly any virus whose DNA sequence has been decoded -- such as the smallpox virus, which was eradicated from nature in 1977 -- as well as artificial microbes that do not exist in nature."
Did I mention: It is scary stuff?
Murderous simplicity
Equally scary is the Bombay attacks, where 10 gunmen murdered 145 civilians and 18 police officers in a 60-hour killing spree.
Bombay, or Mumbai as the wire services now call it, has taken its place on the grisly roll call of terror: 52 dead in the London subway bombings, 91 dead in the Madrid train attacks, 202 dead in the Bali bombings and 2,973 dead in the 9/11 hijackings.
What's especially worrisome about the Bombay massacre is its simplicity. John Timoney, the police chief of Miami, described it as little more than another Columbine, but with 10 suicidal maniacs instead of two.
"This (assault) was not sophisticated. It was not spectacular in that it did not involve planes or large bombs," Timoney said. "It was pretty crude, and that puts a new face on this kind of thing."
Sebastian D'Souza, an editor at a Bombay newspaper, watched the killers methodically shoot people in a crowded train station.
"There were armed policemen hiding all around the station, but none of them did anything," he reported. "At one point, I ran up to them and told them to use their weapons. I said, 'Shoot them, they're sitting ducks!' but they just didn't shoot back."
Founders got it right
Like it or not, it is difficult to imagine a similar scene in communities where law-abiding citizens can obtain permits to carry concealed weapons.
In Michigan, someone would have shot back.
It seems to me the Founding Fathers got it right. They obviously had no concept of designer viruses or dirty bombs, and the Second Amendment is no guarantee of protection from zealots who proselytize with hand grenades and AK-47s.
Still, the message of the amendment echoes over time: The world is and always will be a dangerous place. The people have an infrangible right to defend themselves.
Mike Connell is a freelance writer and a former Times Herald reporter. Contact him at [email protected].
Here's a link to the article:
http://www.thetimesherald.com/article/20081207/OPINION02/812070311&referrer=FRONTPAGECAROUSEL
