The 2nd Amendment to the U. S. Constitution just became a major issue in the 2020 presidential contest. In his victory celebration March 3, former Vice President Joe Biden embraced Beto O’Rourke, and announced that Beto would be the point man for his campaign’s gun control policies and efforts during this election cycle. Biden stated that O’Rourke “will be the one who leads” his gun control effort. This seemed to be a reward for O’Rourke, who withdrew quite a while ago from the presidential contest, endorsing Biden. Why is this significant?

In a September 2019 debate O’Rourke in response to a question about the 2nd Amendment and gun control, made a statement that has long been suspected but never spoken of by gun control advocates. O’Rourke stated, “Hell yes, we’re going to take your AR-15, they are weapons of war, designed to kill people efficiently on a battlefield”, and he went on to say that if efforts to buy back these firearms proved unsuccessful, then he would order the government to use force to seize them. The former presidential contender is an open advocate of confiscation as his vision of “gun-control”.

Therefore, if Joe Biden is nominated to be the Democratic candidate for president, the 2nd Amendment becomes a major issue. This is especially significant for the people of Maine. Maine citizens have a very high incidence of firearm ownership including the misnamed “AR-15 assault rifle”. To suggest that the government could come knocking on your door and demand you forfeit your firearm is frightening. Subsequently, there would nothing to prevent all firearms from being confiscated as well as other constitutional rights to be violated by the government.

If we were to ask most folks what the 2nd Amendment says, what would be the response? I suspect that we would hear repeatedly, the “right to bear arms”. What does this amendment really say? “… the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.” It is not just “bear arms” but “to keep” followed by “shall not be infringed”. When “to keep” and “shall not be infringed” are correctly added to the phrase “and bear arms”, firearm ownership and use as an absolute right becomes undeniably clear.

Please notice that the only mention in this article so far of the word “weapon” was uttered by Beto O’Rourke. The anti-gun folks with the mainstream media have worked hard and been very successful in replacing the words “gun” or “firearm” with the word “weapon”. This is just plain wrong. A firearm only becomes a weapon if it is directed at another human being. The vast majority of people who own firearms do not own weapons. There are millions upon millions of baseball bats in circulation throughout the country. If someone kills or injures someone with a baseball bat, does that make all baseball bats weapons. No. Only the one used to kill or injure someone is a weapon.

Many of us are alarmed at the killing that happens in firearm violence. The keyword in this sentence is not “firearm” but “violence”. It has already been proven that additional firearm laws do not have any measureable effect on firearm violence. What must be dealt with is the culture of violence. It seems that every new movie or video is advertised with “assault looking” firearms being used as weapons with folks dropping like flies and great fireballs in the sky. As a nation we should be looking at the culture of violence as the real culprit in these horrible tragedies. Much is made of firearm rights organizations efforts to defeat additional gun control measures. However, where is the outrage at the mental health lobby at preventing potential violent people from being screened? While movie and video ratings theoretically prevent under age youth from viewing or attending these violent shows, nothing is done to prevent the advertising of that same violence. As a start our youth need to realize that people running all over shooting everything in sight is not what we desire to be treated as normal.

It would not be surprising for Biden or his staff to realize the consequences of alienating firearm owners and become very quiet on the issue. However, we should realize that it was spoken aloud and firearm owners should be very suspicious of their intent. There are many different issues that go into Maine citizens making a decision about for what candidate to cast a vote. A firearm owner should make the upholding of the 2nd Amendment a very major part of that decision.

Another View is written on a rotating basis by a member of a group of conservative Midcoast citizens that meet to discuss issues they think are of public interest. 

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