Another Tragedy

This time in Connecticut, where a gunman opened fire in an elementary school and killed 27 people, including, apparently, himself.  There will be lots of pundits pontificating on why and how it happened, and the NRA can be counted on to repeat it's tired "guns don't kill, people kill" mantra. 

There was a comment thread on the Democracy for America Facebook page that called for "serious dialogue about gun control."  My comment was: "We're way past time for "a serious dialogue about gun control." It's time to tell the NRA to get lost and enact serious control measures. We don't live in the late 18th century anymore. We have way too many people living in much more dense communities than 1789 and it's time to recognize that."

I'm dismayed that so many people on a liberal page like DFA were still mouthing NRA  platitudes and refusing to recognize that the Founders didn't do as great a job on the Second Amendment as they did on the rest of the Constitution.   Times have changed.   A lot.  

Back during the formation of our nation, we had essentially a foreign army on our soil (the British army and its hired mercenaries) and we were largely an agrarian society.  In that context, it may have made sense to guarantee "the right to bear arms" for the citizens who were largely on their own for defense.  And when the new country declared independence and needed to quickly pull together an army to drive out the "foreign" troops, the American recruits brought their own weapons with them.

Times have changed and the context has changed.  We have robust police departments at the local and state levels to protect us, but the odds are currently stacked against them.
 
Life is a lot more crowded these days.   US Population in 1790: 3.9 Million.  US Population in 2010: 308.7 Million. That's an increase of nearly 800% (although my math skills may not be up to par; correct me if my arithmetic is off).  Population density has also changed drastically.  In 1790, we had our population spread across about 865,000 square miles, or 4.5 persons per sq. mile.  In 2000, our population was spread across 3.5 million sq. miles, or about 80 persons per sq. mile.  We live much closer together and with the huge increase in sheer numbers, IMO there are simply a lot more unbalanced people out there.  

We can no longer justify the rationale that had merit 223 years ago.  The rest of the developed world has nowhere near our firearm murder rates and it's past time for us to grow up and pass serious, nationwide, gun control laws.