Guns and Churches for Security
Another attempt at the 2nd
I think it is time to forget the debate about ownership of guns in America. The contentious Second Amendment of their Constitution needs clearer interpretation and hopefully the Supreme Court would rise to the occasion and be true to English as a mode of communication than Political English as a mode for confusion by June 2008.
I covered this matter in October 2004, I have read the Second Amendment a good few times and the text needs no further clarification than what it states.
“A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of the free state, then the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed”.
The plurality of this statement is evident in that one person cannot constitute a militia, that it is to be regulated would mean that the militia would be under the control of some organised organ of the free state.
The right of the people to keep and bear arms, - not everyman - then derives from membership of the well regulated militia that acts to secure the free state.
It would by inference mean that everyone who then keeps and bears arms must be available to be called up to the service of maintaining the security of the free state; that does not read personal property or any other endeavour.
So, how this can be read to mean everyone has the right to bear arms escapes me, but lobbies and political subterfuge have allowed for a very basic law to become a standard for the bastardisation of English as we know it.
This issue has visited the Supreme Court five times but never resulted in clearing the supposed ambiguity in the statement – these learned judges of the United States of America Supreme Court have an opportunity to make history and their courage must not fail them.
Cold dead innocents
Americans would not part with their guns easily, as in the words of Charlton Heston when his great machismo had not deserted him, he declared that his musket gun would have to snatched “from my cold, dead hands”.
One wonders how many more innocent off the streets of America without guns to protect themselves but running the gauntlet of deranged people who shoot up everything that moves, should have their lives snuffed out by cold murderous hands before someone begins to reconsider this affinity for Wild West braggadocio, the swagger and the quick-draw at noon.
Church offers no refuge
What bothers one even more is the recent incident of mass killing in religious meeting places. Anyone would think a church or a church establishment offers a kind of sanctuary not only as shelter from the elements but also from disturbed and deranged gun-totting death-mongers who having concluded on the worthlessness of their lives need to make their deaths significant by taking innocent people along.
Not only that, one is also concerned about a development that my fellow blogger friend Roosevelt has noticed, a trend towards armed security at churches. Surely, not to keep church-goers in order, but who knows?
The security guard said this, “I took cover, and I waited for him to get closer, and I came out of cover and identified myself, and engaged him, and took him down. And that's pretty much it.” She took him down! Hallelujah!
My Jesus Boys
No, it is not funny at all, but that is not the only place where a type of protection has been employed by the church to maintain order. A few weeks ago in Nigeria at a major gospel concert called The Experience , the organisers engaged the services of the usually menacing hoodlums and anti-social vermin of “Area Boys ” to police the premises and handle the matters of order and some ushering under some supervision – hence their Damascene conversion to Jesus Boys – it almost reads like comedy.
However, when you read the story of an influential madam ordering her driver to drive up against the traffic only to be arrested by the state governor, it suddenly seems having armed security and hoodlum ushers in the church is all too necessary as the custom registration on her car read “My Jesus”.
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