Texas is a whole ‘nother country. That was an advertising slogan one to increase tourism. But there is some truth to it. And Texas is really a symbol for all the deeply red states where “Guns & God” (i.e., the God of the Last Judgment, not the merciful loving god) are clung to by so many people. Indeed, guns are a religion in those states, so it should come as no surprise that gun activists are pushing for more guns in schools, and the first battleground they have chosen will be the Lone Star State.
ARLINGTON — In the wake of the Connecticut school shooting, two gun-rights activists are preparing to return to the Arlington school board early next year hoping to persuade the district to allow teachers and administrators to carry concealed handguns on campus. […]
“We have to allow qualified people to be ready to roll when the time comes,” said [NRA puppet] McElwee, who is not discouraged by the board’s lack of consideration of the idea last year. “The idea of allowing teachers to carry guns is gaining momentum on its own.”
Gaining momentum on its own? Only among the true believers. Unfortunately may of them reside in states like Texas, where Republican control of local government in encased in concrete.
“You are going to put teachers, people teaching 6-year-olds in a school, and expect them to respond to an active-shooter situation?” said Ladd Everitt, a spokesman for the Washington, D.C.-based Coalition to Stop Gun Violence, who called the idea of arming teachers “madness.”
Dan Gross, president of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, said focusing on arming teachers “furthers a dangerous conversation that only talks about guns as protection without a discussion about the serious risks they present.”
But McElwee said the Arlington district may be violating the Second Amendment rights of teachers by not allowing those with a concealed-carry license to bring their weapons to school.
Yes, because the 2nd ame3ndment specifically provides that you can carry your gun on you anywhere, anytime. Sure, there may be no specific language to that effect in the amendment, with all its talk of a well regulated militia, but we all know what the founders wanted, even if they never specifically stated in their arguments for the 2nd amendment that they intended Americans to have that right. After all, “original intent” (with respect to the 2nd amendment and the 2nd amendment alone) can be “understood” to implicitly include the right to carry weapons anywhere people choose, regardless of what the founders actually stated, or past judicial precedent from the 19th century concluded.
In regard to the Second Amendment, not a single Congressman or Senator is recorded as saying that it would establish an individual’s right to possess a weapon. While ambassador to Great Britain, John Adams, in 1787, had authored A Defence of the Constitutions of Government of the United States, in which he wrote that a general availability of arms would “demolish every constitution, and lay the laws prostrate, so that liberty can be enjoyed by no man – it is a dissolution of government.” In the First Congress, no one contradicted the Vice President’s words.
The 9th Circuit, in its 2002 decision Silveira v. Lockyer, stated in its comprehensive review of the original founder’s debate over the 2nd amendment:
We believe the answer to the definitional question is the one that most persons would expect: militia” refers to a state military force. We reach our conclusion not only because that is the ordinary meaning of the word, but because contemporaneously
enacted provisions of the Constitution that contain the
word “militia” consistently use the term to refer to a state military entity, not to the people of the state as a whole. […]Not only did the drafters of the Constitution use “militia” to refer to state military entities, so too did the drafters of the Constitution’s predecessor document, the Articles of Confederation. The Articles provided that “every state shall always keep up a well regulated and disciplined militia, sufficiently armed and accoutered, and shall provide and constantly have ready for use, in public stores, a due number of field pieces and tents, and a proper quantity of arms, ammunition and camp equipage.” THE ARTICLES OF CONFEDERATION art. 6 (1777), in DOCUMENTS OF AMERICAN HISTORY 112 (Henry Steele Commager ed., 7th ed.1963). The “well regulated and disciplined militia[s]” described by the Articles of Confederation were quite clearly those institutions established by the individual states. Thus, the prevailing understanding both before and at the time of the adoption of the Constitution was that a “militia” constituted a state military force to which the able—bodied male citizens of the various states might be called to service.
But as I stated earlier, Texas and the other “red” states no longer care about the purpose of the 2nd amendment. All they care about is allowing guns, regardless of how deadly they may be or how much of a threat they pose to your right to “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness,” to be sold and possessed by as many people as possible.
You may not want to have teachers carrying guns in school. You may think it threatens the safety of your children. However, the 2nd amendment (as interpreted by the NRA) trumps all other rights, so tough luck Texans, Floridians, Arizonans, Kansans, and so forth and so on. And lot’s of luck if your children attend schools where anyone in the future is allowed to carry a concealed weapon if they have a “permit.”
Heck, you might as well repeat the same story with respect to malls, bars, stores, ad nauseam. If your state decides you have no right to refuse people who carry firearms to enter your business establishment, well what can I say? We live in the bizarre world of the NRA and America’s gun culture, where anyone has the “constitutional right” to carry a weapon anywhere, and you have no right to stop them. Can’t wait to see how that plays out at Disney World or your local library, among other places.
