Amendment # 2

[the mingo]

The Founding Fathers certainly did not mean, by any stretch of the imagination, for us to bring and then sacrifice our children wholesale on the altar of the Second Amendment.

The Second Amendment was meant for reasonable men & women. It was not intended for zealots, the mentally ill, the emotionally disturbed, or preachers of any stripe.

The Second Amendment is not Holy Writ - that approach died 26 times at Sandy Hook Elementary School.

I am a gun owner. I am not a member of the NRA or other like-minded organizations and believe it the NRA is nothing if not organized. I have a healthy fear of any organization or group that has vowed to "protect" my "rights". I have no need of anyone with nothing but "fear talk" to give out in answer to any situation or question.

I have found the majority of my fellow citizens to be reasonable creatures and, sometimes, in very surprising ways. We do not need kneejerk reactions - we need to get on it together. To face facts & confront truth and sort out what we have to do now and what we need to do for a future that does not include mass murder at schools, places of business, shopping malls, hospitals, or homes. If it is not yet clear that no human being needs access to 25, 50, or 100 round magazines for any reason whatsoever then we deserve what we get - and our loved ones, or the loved ones of others, will pay & go on paying, the price of our cowardice.

I am a gun owner. I am a Vietnam veteran. I have carried a military assault rifle into combat and used it there. When I left the kill zone I had no further need of a military assault weapon and neither does anyone else. No one needs a modern pistol, which has become certainly an assault weapon with multiple shot capabilities. When the Second Amendment was crafted every firearm was single shot, excepting double barrel shotguns. Those guns had to be reloaded after every shot, a time consuming process - a life-sparing process -it is way past time we remember this. We adapt now, if we do not we admit to hating life & loving death.

I am a citizen of the United States of America. I do not love death.

[mnaz]

of course.