I've got some writing creds. I took your words and edited them, without adding too much of my own verbiage, except where neccessary, and trying to still keep it your work. I took out what I thought was the weaker stuff entirely. Corrected most of the punctuation too.
See if you think it reads better.
JR
The Ice Pick Effect
One the most controversial and debated topics in America is the 2nd amendment. As stated in the U.S. Constitution, the 2nd amendment says “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” The 2nd amendment is the key component to a free people staying free. During the time the Bill of Rights was written, the Framers recognized the dangers a standing army posed to a free country. A militia is a group composed of any willing man of age. It is these citizens, the people, whose right to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed. Not just the police, not just the military, not just the government, but the average person, the citizen.
Quite often when we hear about a shooting on the news, the report focuses on the weapon, and this turns into talk of banning it because of how it looks or how it works. This is irrational (and dangerous) thinking. It stems from the equally dangerous assumption that “If there were no guns, there wouldn’t be any violence.” A more reasoned statement would be “If there were no guns, there would be no means for the single citizen to protect himself from the gang or mob, the elderly or infirm to protect themselves from the young and strong, the honest citizen to protect himself from the violent predator.”
The mere presence of a firearm means a solid and dependable source of security and defense. A home security system or more cops out on the street can make you feel safer, but a good firearm by your nightstand can help you be safer when an intruder breaks in and the police haven’t arrived yet. If the electricity goes out or the phone lines are down or the security system fails, you can call the police on your cell phone, but it still takes them at least several minutes to respond to a call. What are you going to do with a criminal inside your house with the police still minutes away?
According to the National Safety Council, firearms are used approximately 2.5 million times a year by law-abiding citizens for self-defense. And in most of those cases, a citizen simply brandishing a firearm is enough to scare off a would-be robber, mugger, rapist or killer. Do we citizens really want to give up this ability?
It is unconscionable that many elected officials want to erode our right to keep firearms in our homes. Erode is indeed the right word. I call it the “Ice pick effect,” but others may call it “Salami tactics” or “Boiling the frog.” In any event, the anti-gun crowd never tries to take away all firearms at once, although they would like to. They don’t try to do it all at once because they know it can’t be done.
Instead, the anti-Second Amendment crowd tries to chip away at our freedoms. They will try to ban .50 caliber rifles because they are “too big.” Then they want to ban handguns “because they cannot be used for hunting most types of game.” Then they want to ban high capacity magazines “because you don’t need more than a few shots.” Then they want to ban semi-automatic firearms “because they don’t serve a practical purpose.” Then they want to ban firearms that are larger than a certain caliber “because they are too powerful.” This is akin to chipping away at a block of ice with an ice-pick. Eventually, we have lost all our gun rights.
In addition to these slice-at-a-time tactics, foes of the Second Amendment often use another common political tactic: Misinformation. One recent example was the so-called “Assault Weapon” ban. An assault rifle is classified by the ATF as a fully automatic military weapon—a machine gun. Like all other fully automatic weapons, it can only be legally purchased after extensive background checks and other legal hurdles. A fully-automatic and a semi-automatic weapon are two completely different arms. A full-auto weapon fires as long as the trigger is held down, a semi-auto fires one shot with each pull of the trigger and requires the trigger to be released in order to fire again. The AW ban didn’t ban assault weapons. It banned semiauto guns that looked like machine guns. Does it make sense to ban a firearm based on its physical and cosmetic appearance? Yes, if your goal is to ban all guns.
Street criminals aren’t the only predators deterred by citizens with guns. Political leaders with a thirst for genocide are deterred as well. Disarming the populace of a free country paves the way for genocide. What if some of the 6 million Jews that Hitler and the Nazi party slaughtered during the holocaust in WW2 had been armed? Hundreds of thousands of armed citizens capable of fighting for their lives against a fanatical military dictatorship would have been a powerful deterrent. What of the hundreds of thousands of people massacred in Rwanda? They weren’t killed with firearms, but with knives, machetes, gardening tools and other common objects. If those souls that were lost in the holocaust and the genocide had been armed, the genocides wouldn’t have happened.
An autocratic iron-fisted dictatorship style of a government that tries to oppress and control its people fears nothing more than an armed public. As Howard Fast, a black freed slave in the novel Freedom Road said, “Take a man who got a gun, [if] you want to enslave him, you got to take that gun away.” You can’t put things more clearly than that. In countries such as North Korea where the government controls the people’s lives, the people are denied firearms. Does America want that for itself?
We must make a decision. Do we stand up for our 2nd amendment rights, or do we submit to the anti-gun politicians who want us to be defenseless? Do we tolerate those who want to slowly pick away at our freedoms, a tiny bit at a time, until nothing is left, or do we fight for our gun rights at every opportunity? Do we allow gun bans because of cosmetic reasons (it looks like a military weapon, but isn’t), or because it is “too powerful,” or simply because it can hold a certain number or rounds in its magazine? Or do we fight these bans tooth and nail?
I’m in favor of keeping my rights. I’m going to fight.