Heller.  Yes.  I know this bothers some of my friends but I completely agree with yesterday’s supreme court decision regarding D.C.’s gun ban.  But this kind of rhetoric, from McCain’s campaign, really bothers me…

Today’s decision is a landmark victory for Second Amendment freedom in the United States…

Blah…blah…blah…  Here’s the part I mean… 

Unlike Senator Obama, who refused to join me in signing a bipartisan amicus brief, I was pleased to express my support and call for the ruling issued today. Today’s ruling in District of Columbia v. Heller makes clear that other municipalities like Chicago that have banned handguns have infringed on the constitutional rights of Americans. Unlike the elitist view that believes Americans cling to guns out of bitterness, today’s ruling recognizes that gun ownership is a fundamental right – sacred, just as the right to free speech and assembly.

Emphasis mine.  Sacred?  Sacred?  Well if it’s sacred, Bob Barr has something to say about McCain’s devotion then…

But…see…this is what bothers me…this elevating of guns to the status of religious objects.  They aren’t.  If there is any fundamental right here at all it’s the right to self preservation, and even that isn’t sacred or else you’d have to condemn soldiers, policemen, firemen, and anyone and everyone who ever sacrificed their own lives for others.  The sacred thing here, if anything, is life itself.  And even that isn’t always a black and white thing. 

I know…I know…  McCain is just pushing buttons.  But it’s this kind of thing that has dragged the conversation about morality in this country down into the gutter.  It cheapens both the concept of the sacred, and the thing you are trying to superficially attach it to.  Guns aren’t sacred objects.  They’re useful tools and the government has no business banning them outright, not even for the simple reason that people have a right to defend themselves, but more specifically because while government may be our protector in many ways, it is not our nanny and we are not its children.

It’s entirely proper and reasonable for government to take a roll in keeping deadly weapons out of the hands of anyone likely to commit crimes of violence.  It’s completely reasonable for government to regulate the kinds of firearms people can own, and how and when they can bear them in public.  That’s different from taking the position that no individual citizen can own a gun period, because then you’re saying that the people have no right to self defense.  That completely changes the relationship between citizens and their government, in just the same way that censorship and morality laws do.  And let’s face it…outright gun bans aren’t public safety laws, they’re morality laws.

Which…let it be said…all the brave second amendment warriors out there in the NRA and other gun groups really don’t give a crap about, unless it involves their Sacred Guns.  On the SLOG Blog the other day in a thread about Heller, a commenter pointedly pointed out that Bush has ripped up habeas corpus and the gun groups kept silent.  He went on a wiretapping rampage and the gun groups kept silent.  And don’t get me started on the fact that so many second amendment warriors are raving homophobic bigots who hated to see the sodomy laws overturned and who are probably campaigning right now to see same sex marriage banned everywhere.  All their fine and noble rhetoric about freedom and liberty and patriotism is just so much bullshit. 

When you get right down to it, the second amendment warriors have been responsible for more erosion of our civil liberties and more damage to our constitution then anything the Brady Campaign could ever have done.  So to all the cheering second amendment warriors out there right now I would just like to say Shut Your Fucking Pie-Hole!  Please.  If Scalia had written instead that gun bans are a legitimate expression of the moral values of the voters in a community, just what the fuck would you have said to that?  That majorities don’t have the right to impose their moral values on everyone else?  Especially when their doing that puts other people’s families at risk?  Please.  Just…shut up.