The Founding Fathers included the Second Amendment in the Bill of Rights for a very good reason. They recognized that the Constitution, as it was originally written, didn’t go far enough to protect our rights. Without that protection, tyranny could rise up and flourish, eventually scrapping the very document that founded a free nation.
Since that time, the right to keep and bear arms has served as a check on both government overreach and potential invasion. While Yamamoto may not have actually said anything about “a rifle behind every blade of grass,” I can’t rule out him thinking something along those lines.
Yet our right to own guns isn’t universally beloved.
In Europe, many just can’t understand our aversion to gun control. They look at their own crime rates, then ours, and think the answer is obvious. I disagree, but I’m not worried about France invading, either.
China is a different matter, and once again, a Chinese “news” site is taking a shot at the Second Amendment.
When the US Founding Fathers passed the Second Amendment, they meant to grant US people a means to resist any tyrant that might emerge. But two centuries later guns themselves have become their own tyranny.
Interest groups in the US are the ones who profit from this bloodshed. For the sake of higher sales, they are willing to put 330 million Americans at risk and keep them worried about their security constantly.
Whether or not to support gun control is not a matter of politics. It is a matter of humanity and conscience.
This is rich coming from state-run Chinese media.
This is a country that has literal concentration camps within its borders, and it’s going to try to lecture us on tyranny?
I’m sorry, but neither I nor any other advocate of gun rights is about to change our position because a tyrannical regime is claiming anything about tyranny here.
Further, I have deepening concerns about how China seems so preoccupied with our right to keep and bear arms. They are constantly seeking to undermine it by pretending to offer “unbiased” op-eds decrying gun ownership.
Yet this is a nation that seeks to challenge the United States on the global stage. While it would be years off, one doesn’t have to stretch very far to see the possibility of warfare between China and the United States.
I’m of the opinion that this push is an attempt not at addressing legitimate human rights concerns–again, they have concentration camps, thus no moral authority to talk about human rights at all–but is instead battlespace prep.
Any invasion of the United States would also have to deal with an armed populace. We’ve seen through decades of experience just how difficult it is to fight a guerilla war. Armed Americans would resist Chinese tyranny should their military set foot on American soil and they know it.
So it’s difficult not to imagine that all this talk about tyranny from guns is nothing more than their attempt to shift popular opinion to supporting more and more gun restrictions so they won’t have to worry should they attempt an invasion.
Plus, frankly, they likely see an opportunity to throw gas onto the fire of American politics and further destabilize things here.
Either way, China’s opinions on the matter should only be reflected upon for the purposes of ridicule. The blatant hypocrisy it takes for a stooge of a tyrannical government to attempt to claim the very tools of liberty result in tyranny is something to behold.
Seriously, it’s impressive. It’s wrong, mind you, and disgusting, but impressive just the same.