CLINGING TO THEIR BIBLES, THEIR GUNS AND THEIR CONSTITUTION

Wednesday, 8:30 AM.  25 degrees F, wind WSW, calm to light.  The sky is again completely overcast, although we had a bit of filtered sunlight yesterday afternoon. The humidity is 90%, the barometric pressure 29.95 in., up a bit from yesterday.
        Last evening Joan and I attended a retirement reception for Cari Obst, Bayfield Chamber of Commerce and Visitor’s Center director for the past ten years.  Cari put Bayfield on the national tourist map, put the Chamber finances In the black, and dramatically increased its membership.  Her position is being filled by good friend and associate David Eads, formerly Cari’s go to guy.      .
        The reception at Bayfield’s landmark Old Rittenhouse Inn was filled with good food and good companionship, and we were once again impressed with the local small business community that includes very many of our friends and acquaintances. I often complain about the weather and other things, but Bayfield is truly a special place filled with very talented and special people, and we were reminded again yesterday of why we moved here.
        The gun control battle has now begun in earnest, and one fact I would like to present, without prejudice, as they say in court, is that the worst school shooting in America occurred in Bath, Michigan, in 1927, when the elected school district treasurer shot a number of students and teachers and then blew up the entire school with dynamite that he had been secreting for months in the school basement.  Forty-seven students and teachers were killed. Maniacal evil is not a new phenomenon (for additional information see theitem.com, Gorden Osteen's post of 12/16/12).
        That aside, I have been considering for years why so many Americans (including myself) defend their second amendment right to keep and bear arms even when they personally do not feel particularly threatened with crime or violence.  Commentators (columnist Bernie Goldberg made a statement yesterday) are now beginning to say outright what I have thought myself for a long, long time and what I posit now:
        America was born in violent revolution against a distant and despotic government.  The Bill of Rights, including the Second Amendment, was necessary for the Constitution to be ratified by the original thirteen states of the Union.  The Founders' fear was not only or even principally of crime and violence, or of foreign oppression, but of the Federal Government itself, and that fear continues to exist in the American psyche, and is fed today by the overreaching and some would even say the dictatorial ambitions of the current administration. 
        One of the easiest ways to allay the fears and overreactions of the American public as regards gun laws is for the far left to stop its assault on the Second Amendment and the rest of the Bill of Rights.
Absent that, gun sales of all types will continue to soar, as they are at this very moment in the wake of the Sandy Hook tragedy. 
        Unfortunately, the President and his Administration evidently do not know, and will not even try to understand, the tens and tens of millions of their own countrymen who will continue to cling not only to their bibles and their guns but also to their constitution.