Exclusive: A numbness followed the latest mass shooting this time at a community college in Oregon. Many Americans were frozen in futility as powerful political forces asserted that the Second Amendment prohibits any gun laws. But that claim is historically false, writes Robert Parry.
Tag: Second Amendment
Playing Deadly Games with ‘Gun Rights’
Pro-gun extremists routinely edit out of the Second Amendment its stated purpose of having “a well-regulated militia” maintain state “security.” The tampering lets them pretend the Founders would be okay with slaughters like the Newtown massacre, as Bill Moyers and Michael Winship…
The 2nd Amendment and Killing Kids
From the Archive: The comedy team Key and Peele cut through the Right’s Second Amendment madness best in a bit in which Peele travels back in time with Uzis to confront its authors over their careless wording. But there is…
The NRA’s War on America
From the Archive: One year ago, 20 first-graders went off to school in Newtown, Connecticut, some surely thinking about the upcoming Christmas holidays. But they never came home, becoming along with six of their educators collateral damage in the NRA’s…
The ‘Merchant of Death’ Lobby
The U.S. gun industry doesn’t want any restrictions on its profit-making role as a global “merchant of death,” so its lobby has whipped half the Senate into line opposing a treaty aimed at curbing human rights crimes by regulating the…
‘Gun Rights’ of Domestic Abusers
The right-wing-controlled U.S. Supreme Court has put the supposed right of Americans to carry their firearms of choice over the safety of individuals who are potential victims of gun violence. That pattern may be tested again in a case to…
How Fake 2nd Amendment History Kills
Exclusive: Another mass shooting has stunned America, although the sentiment is now more numbness and hopelessness than outrage and resolve. The gun carnage will probably never end unless the Right’s bogus history of the Second Amendment is exploded and the…
Hiding the Numbers on Gun Madness
Between the Right’s false history of the Second Amendment and the NRA’s lobbying clout, the American scandal of uncontrolled firearms and their use in mass slayings continues unabated. The gun madness has even prevented law enforcement from quantifying the crisis,…
Gunning for Anti-Gun Laws
Right-wing propaganda has duped millions of Americans into believing that the Framers devised the Second Amendment so individuals could possess personal arsenals to shoot police, soldiers and other government representatives. This false narrative has made sane gun laws hard to…
The Lure of Violent Revolution
It’s become trendy in some circles mostly on the Right since the election of the first African-American president but also a bit on the Left to talk breezily of armed revolution. But bloodshed is wrongheaded and reckless when political space remains for…