The people speak their minds about gun control . . and politicians ignore them

Quoting from Jay Bookman's Atlanta Journal-Constitution last week about allowing guns on college campuses:

"In an AJC poll two years ago, Georgia voters were asked a question:  'Do you favor or oppose allowing students to carry guns on college campuses and in college dorms?'

"Just 20 percent supported allowing guns on campus; 78 percent opposed it. Seventy-one percent of Republicans opposed it; 71 percent of voters in North Georgia opposed it; more than 80 percent of those in South Georgia opposed it. Male, female, black, white, Republican, Democrat, urban, rural, old, young: Georgians overwhelmingly opposed it.

"Yet this week, House Republicans introduced legislation that would legalize firearms on campus anyway. House Bill 859 has already been embraced by House Speaker David Ralston, who argues that 'getting a college degree should not mean abdicating your Second Amendment rights.'"

Bookman points out that Ralston is an attorney and should know that, even in the 2008 Supreme Court decision that affirmed an individual right to own firearms, the author of the majority opinion, conservative Justice Antonin Scalia, took the time to write in it this explicit clarification:

". . . nothing in our opinion should be taken to cast doubt on . . .  laws forbidding the carrying of firearms in sensitive places such as schools and government buildings.”

Thus, as recently as 2008, SCOTUS has said the Second Amendment does not give the right to carry any firearm just anywhere.  Bookman continues:

"So imagine if you’re a professor meeting a student angry about a grade, and the student shows up at your office with a sidearm. . . . Imagine that after a heated classroom discussion, one of the angry students shows up armed at the next scheduled class. . . .  neither the professor nor fellow students would have legal recourse to object. . . .


"In that same AJC poll, 82 percent supported requiring a gun-safety course as a condition of receiving a permit. . . .  Three bills creating such a system have been introduced in the current legislative session, but they are doomed. . . .  the odds of passage are about the same as a resolution making Barack Obama president for life."

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It seems that conservative politicians absolutely lose their minds when it comes to guns.   Or maybe they don't lose their minds.   They know what they're doing is dangerous and wrong.   But the power of NRA money is just too much for them to resist. 

When those same people rant and rave about the sanctity of the Founding Fathers and their intent, someone should remind them that those wise men began our Declaration of Independence with "We the People."   Do you think they only meant the people who were living in 1776?   Doesn't the will of We, the Living People, count?

The sad thing is that in Georgia our legislative districts are so politically drawn that this saying is literally true:  "Voters no longer choose their representatives;   politicians choose their voters."    We need to get rid of the corrupting influence of money in politics;  and we need to have an independent, unbiased commission to draw up district lines.

Ralph