Brady Bunch, Bush, and the NRA Agree on Latest Federal Gun Control Measure

Tuesday, January 8, 2008, President Bush signed a new gun control measure into law. While federal laws had previously been in effect to require states to verify gun purchasers were not mentally ill, no money was allocated for states to implement systems to quickly and accurately make proper determinations. The new law allocates over a billion dollars in your tax money to implement such systems and processes.

It is easy to see why the anti gun control crowd and the NRA agreed on the new measure. With the horrific occurrence at Virginia Tech and the resulting media investigation that outed the deceased killer of so many innocent people as a mentally ill person, it is politically difficult to stand in the way of such a law. On the surface, it makes perfect sense to deny weapons to the mentally ill and convicted felons.

Yet the thing that is being ignored in the wake of this tragedy is the Constitution of the United States. That document does not stipulate that only mentally pure non-felons may keep and bear arms. It states simply that the right of two groups to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed. Those two groups are individuals and militias. Our founding fathers crafted a magnificent document that has stood the test of more than two centuries of politics, war, and national disaster. We should be very cautious before we enact laws that clearly defy it.

This new law may save lives. It may save the lives of potential innocent victims and some mentally ill would be killers as well.