That’s right paragraphs. I usually just pick one, but these two consecutive graphs from a column about 3D printer guns were both priceless:
Second Amendment enthusiasts are already on shaky ground when they make appeals to the intent of our Founding Fathers – note the distinct lack of well-regulated militias among private gun owners – but on the issue of 3D printed guns their argument becomes farcical: Jefferson was an imaginative inventor and an open-minded man of science, but I’m pretty sure if presented with the technology used to make guns out of thin air, he wouldn’t think about its potential to provide weapons to revolutionaries, he would think it was magic.
For that matter, he might also consider flying metal ships carrying hundreds of passengers thousands of miles to be magic, but I have little doubt that he would understand the principle of hijacking such fantastic contraptions and smashing them into civilian targets. It’s one thing to understand, as Jefferson did, that liberty demands a watchful and prepared populace; it’s quite another to turn a blind eye to fatal technology whose purpose is untethered to self-protection or even sport. The only reason to want a gun that’s undetectable by security measures is to threaten security.
Dr. A is from Jefferson country and I’ve spent lots of time in Charlottesville where everyone is forever asking WWTJD: What would TJ do? Nobody knows, but I think Ana Marie nailed it when she said he’d think a lot of modern shit is MAGIC. That’s why the attempt to discern the founders/framers intent is futile in the intenet era. Besides, I bet if you asked a teabagger if TJ was one of the framers of the constitution, they’d say “hell, yes.” Instead, TJ was in Paris hanging out at the court and chasing Sally Hemings around the room.
The mere notion that we should consider allowing plastic guns is crazy even for the NRA. I realize Wayne LaPierre may be down with whacking liberals but I have the feeling that many of his members are not. At least, I hope so.
The irony in invoking TJ’s “tree of liberty should be soaked with the blood of patriots” quote is that it was RHETORIC. Jefferson was a disastrous war time Governor of Virginia. He reputation suffered for years after he ran away from the British army. That’s right, y’all, Thomas Jefferson was a politician, not a demigod. The Second Amendment absolutists should put that in their pipe and smoke it, but rewriting history is what the right does.
That is all.