Who Wants to Disarm the Nation? Almost Nobody

Listening to Thom Hartmann's radio program today, the subject of guns and disarming the nation's citizenry came up. Hartmann said or implied that only a very small minority wants to do the latter. So if the overwhelming majority of Americans opposes any kind of radical disarmament scheme, including us, why does this issue seem to be so prevalent on talk shows and generally in the news? The answer lies in the success of the Limbaugh-ite disinformation campaign to give the false impression that there is some kind of disarmament campaign going on, which there is not. These people will distort almost any subject if they think they can get some political capital out of it. What most Americans want is not general disarmament, but some sensible limitations on military-type weapons and automatic machine guns.

We strongly support the second amendment of the national constitution and the right of the citizenry to bear arms, not in the least because an armed populace could well be the last check in defending the Constitution, but the right to bear arms, generally, should be a right of individuals, and that shouldn't be construed as meaning private armies, which should be outlawed, as some states do, nor buying bazookas and compact missile launchers, nor other military weapons of that type, nor should it mean that the public cannot keep certain weapons from being allowed in some public spaces. On the whole, there needs to be a balance between armament rights and common sense.

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