Martha strikes me as a pistol grip shotgun kind of gal. . .
But thanks to a 1968 gun control law put in place by the federal government anyone convicted of a felony is not allowed to posses a firearm for the rest of their lives. So while bank robbers and murders can’t ever legally own a gun, white collar criminals and non-violent offenders can’t either.
This means people like our dear Martha, who pled guilty to a list of felonies surrounding a stock trade, have been stripped of their constitutional right to keep and bear arms. Yes, it makes sense that those who used a gun to commit their crimes or who committed violent crimes should forfeit this right. But not every felon.
Think about a kid who busts a mailbox, a guy who cheats on his taxes, a college kid illegally downloading songs from the Internet and the million of other possibilities. Do these people deserve to lose one of our most fundamental rights?
Can you imagine the government telling you that because you’re a felon you don’t have the right to free speech? No, not at all. Yet somehow we accept this law!
When you combine this law with the War on Drugs, which just happened to emerge about the same time, it seems as though the government has found a way to systematically create a huge number of felons and then strip them of their rights. Our prisons are filled with non-violent offenders who are only there because they engaged in the use or sale of a narcotic. When this population is released they are treated as second class citizens and the government makes sure they are never whole again.
Sadly, our gun control policy in this country is controlled by a fear mongering media and politicians who care more about sound bites than actual results. Even though there has never been a proven link between a strict gun control policy and lower crime our leaders push these draconian laws on us to say they are “tough on crime”.
All the while some of the country’s biggest contributors to these politicians campaigns are prison guard unions and police organizations. They know they must grease the wheels to keep these insane laws on the books and create job security at the cost of our society’s health.
With the Supreme Court’s ruling in the Heller case last year though this all may be changing. Other laws baring criminals from owning guns are being challenged and it seems as though there might be a hope for sanity from the halls of the high court.
Cross your fingers and maybe pretty soon Martha will be packing!
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