End of 2nd Amendment?

An excellent piece can be found by Cam Edwards at Townhall.

Ngoc Le heard his wife’s screams and ran from the back of the wireless store he owns in Camden, New Jersey. His wife was behind the counter, as was a masked man wielding a knife. The man brandished the blade, herding the couple into a back room. Once there, he tied the 28-year old businessman to a chair, then proceeded to rape 22-year old Kelly Le. Once the brutal rape had finished, he slit the couple’s throats, then ran away. There was no 2nd Amendment, no right to own a gun, and Antonio Diaz Reyes got away with murder.

That isn’t actually how the events of December 31st, 2004 played out. We do have a 2nd Amendment in this country, after all. So when Antonio Reyes held Kelly Le at knifepoint, Ngoc Le was able to shoot and kill the attacker with his legally owned firearm. DNA tests later determined that Reyes was responsible for a string of rapes in downtown Camden that had terrorized the city for months. The Le’s were shaken by what happened, but there were no regrets.

Second published article to note the conclusion by others that since we no longer fight the British the need for minutemen is gone and hense any reason to secure gun rights for United States Citizens.

Derby, an English and reading teacher in Camden, New Jersey, says it’s time for the 2nd Amendment to go away. In fact, he says, “The premise of the Second Amendment, the need for minutemen, no longer exists. In a free society we must rely on the police. We have more important rights to fight for than the right to bear arms.”

Cam Edwards easily see through the swiss-cheese logic of the argument and takes a position we took just recently on an editorial.

Tom Derby also says, “When wolves and human predators roamed freely Northeast, one was entitled to defend one’s family and property with firearms. Circumstances have changed; we need to reconsider that entitlement.” How have circumstances changed? Derby has taught in Camden, New Jersey for 18 years. He should be all too familiar with the human predators that still roam the streets. Camden, after all, was named the most dangerous city in America for the second year in a row last year, and has been in the top ten each of the past eight years, according to Morgan Quinto, the company that ranks cities on their crime rates. In 2004 the city’s murder rate was 60.8 per 100,000 residents, more than 11 times the national average. Its robbery rate was almost 8 times the national average, and its rate of aggravated assaults were more than 4 times the national average. Yet Derby says we should no longer be entitled to defend ourselves?

Derby seems to think that if we scrapped the 2nd Amendment, all the criminals in this country would lay down their weapons. Yet the criminal element doesn’t rely on the 2nd Amendment any more than child pornographers rely on the 1st Amendment. Get rid of the right to legally own firearms, and the gang members and street thugs plaguing Camden won’t even blink. But the legal gun owners, like Ngoc Le, will pay the price.

It’s nice to see such fine thinking posted by other authors who have a much larger reading audience. However convincing the argument might be by the conservatives I don’t think the liberals will throw up the white flag anytime soon. Facts only confuse the issue when you have an agenda.

Tags: Conservative, Second Amendment