The NRA has perpetrated a fraud on the Second Amendment. So former Supreme Court Justice Stevens reminds us in a New York Times Op-Ed calling for that amendment’s repeal. Let’s go further. However we interpret the Second Amendment, it enshrines a gluttony for violence that is contrary to all that democracy aspires to be.
Wolves eat like gluttons. A certain wolf at an amusement park ate so much with such haste, they say, that he thought he might die. A bone was stuck in his throat. The wolf, who couldn’t even cry out, was in luck; a stork passed nearby. The wolf signaled the bird. She came running.
Here is our operator at the task in a flash. She pulls out the bone. Then, for her good turn, she asks for a salary.
Your salary? Says the wolf. Don’t make me laugh my fine friend. What? It’s not enough already that it wasn’t your neck down my throat? Get out of here, ingrate. And mind you never fall under my paw.
Over and over we call for stricter gun laws, but without repealing the Second Amendment, we are nothing but storks, pulling our necks from the wolves’ jaws, expecting to be paid in gun legislation. While we must applaud the magnificent energy and determination of the March for Our Lives, not to mention Citigroup’s initiative to set restrictions on gun sales by its business partners and measures taken by Walmart and Dick’s Sporting Goods, all this pressure toward stricter gun control is necessary but not sufficient.
We need to pull out the roots of violence embedded in the country’s Constitution. How much more dialogue, listening and tolerance will we have to enact to save the NRA wolf from choking? We ask the same questions ad nauseum: How many children have to be gunned down in their schools? How many more suicides enabled by easy access to guns — because, yes, that’s one of the highest gun death statistics? How many women killed in domestic violence?
How many more deaths before we let the violence-gluttons choke on their own bones? Guns cause deaths. The psychological foundation of a society that prizes the right to own guns above the prevention of carnage must be eradicated.
Repeal the Second Amendment. Only then can the stork begin to rest easy, instead of living in fear that tomorrow will be the day she falls under the wolf’s paw.
And if you’re looking for more on the Second Amendment: An Appeal to Repeal The Second Amendment in Four Fables
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