This posting is in part a response to Chris Plante’s challenge to liberals to come up with an explanation as to how conservatives are responsible for the shooting of 18 people in Stucksohn (or, Tucson as it’s been called) last week.
The facts: Jared Lee Loughner shot 18 people on January 8, 2011 with a Glock 19 pistol and two 30 round magazines and two standard mags (15 rounds apiece)…around 91 bullets.
Now as right-wingers are always happy to tell ya: liberals DON’T support ‘GUN RIGHTS’! So right they are! We liberals don’t support, so called, ‘gun rights’ and I, for one, don’t even believe in the existence of such a right for every man, woman, and child to run around wild in the street armed to the teeth. I do believe that completely deregulated ‘gun rights’ are a notion that springs from the minds of right wingers and conservatives when they read edited versions of the Constitution in Congress. On this matter, the Constitution, as passed by the Congress says:
Amendment 2 - Right to Bear Arms. Ratified 12/15/1791: A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State
That’s it! The ‘right to bear arms’ is obviously only for the organization of well regulated militias, not every crazy right-wing weekend warrior club or lone ‘nut case’.
So, you can well understand how, if liberals had had complete and unfettered control of the government for, say, the last 30 years, the right to bear arms would have been drastically limited by lots and lots of restrictions. Loughner would never have been able to purchase anything like a Glock 19, or anything else, after the investigation he’d have been subjected to under ‘liberals’ gun laws’.
It is ONLY due to the gun laws that Right Wing conservatives + the NRA + the Republicans have bitterly fought for decades to maintain, that Loughner could have bought the gun, the clips, and the ammo he did in order to kill little Christina Green
and 17 other people.
HEY SARAH, THIS ONE’S ALL YOURS!
Let’s look at this a bit further. We’d probably all agree that Loughner was, in short, a ‘nut case’. Where we’d probably disagree is whether nut cases are responsible for what they do. If someone’s a nut case, then their perceptions are probably wildly discrepant from everybody else’s and their actions, following their perceptions, also ‘out of sync’. What I’ve found missing from the thoughts of those I’ve had to deal with is, a rational bridge between their misperceptions and their actions. Is someone like this really responsible for their actions? If punished by society, do they really get why?
Now, I’m not saying that if a nut case kills somebody they shouldn’t be removed from society (one way or another), just like a big cat that kills somebody. However, the cat has a defense: “I have to kill to eat and I have to eat to live and the human was just in the right place at the right time.” (Something like Sarah Palin’s: “we eat, therefore we hunt”.) And, this is just what the irrational person does not have, unless you can accept something like: “I’m insane and I must kill to make sense of the world as I find it.” I don’t accept such an assertion. You probably don’t. And the courts certainly don’t. However, having no defense, can (or better yet, should) someone irrational be held legally responsible for their actions? Most courts rightly think not. That’s why there’s an insanity plea. And, after enough doctors back up the plea, you’re whisked away for a healthy stay, in the ‘looney bin’. Justice served!
This is the only way it could be in a society ruled by LAW. Else wise, anybody (e.g., Glenn Beck) could set up any criterion for being held legally responsible. Even a nut case like Loughner could, with enough well armed backers! But then what would we have? The rule of the criminally insane?
So, if you eliminate Loughner from consideration, who do you have left to be held responsible? Who has a rational for such actions? The CRIMINALLY INSANE RIGHT WING CONSERVATIVE REPUBLICAN TEABAG PARTY!! And what is their rationale?
‘Many must die to preserve my right to bear arms!’
There’s your answer Chris. And may it serve you well!
