Mayor Bloomberg and the President have received letters recently poisoned with Ricin, a deadly concoction derived from castor beans. The letter came from a gun nut making threats, in addition to the Ricin.Death threats and threats of other kinds of violence is characteristic of the proponents of unlimited firearms. They wrap themselves in the 2nd Amendment, claiming it is a right that the government cannot limit or regulate, despite the fact that we clearly limit and regulate such rights all the time. That is why you cannot yell fire in a crowded theater when there isn't a fire; that is why you cannot print libelous words or make slanderous statements -- those are regulations of our first amendment right to free speech.
You can't own a nuclear bomb, you can't own your own artillery in most instances, or nerve gas either. We regulate what kind of arms and armament ordinary citizens can legally own in conjunction with, not in spite of the 2nd Amendment. Making your own bombs is illegal as well.
Violence is illegal; poison is illegal. Bloomberg and the president are not unique; in the pro-gun regulation blogosphere and among activists in this area, it is an unfortunate badge of honor, a threshold of effectiveness, a 'coming of age' recognition that you are now a recognized person by the gun-huggers when you get your first death threat.
Most, like Bloomberg, like President Obama, and yes ......like me, get more than one. I've had my share.
That is because the gun guys are mostly old, white, crabby and flabby, and mostly conservative. They feel a need for guns because they are aware that they are not young or fit (sometimes just not very physically fit) and guns give them the emotional feeling of power and competence. It is their 'equalizer', their compensation for potency and physical ability. It appeals to their desire to see themselves as heroic figures, like Rambo, or more frequently 'Gramp-bo'. Anyone who threatens their delusions of adequacy, literally their death grip on what becomes a fetish object to them. Guns become a core element of their identity, when you get to the hard core gun nuts, like the kind who send death threats.
As I've noted here before, the right has a persistent, chronic problem with people who threaten violence. Just this week, one of their crazies, Adam Kokesh, canceled AGAIN his 'armed march' on Washington DC to overthrow the government, and instead opted for individual marches on state capitals to overthrow the federal government. Because in his weird deluded mind, marching on state government makes some kind of sense.
There is a strong overlap between the 2nd amendment gun nut fanatics, the conspiracy theory wackos of the far right, and those who advocate regularly and often to incite sedition and insurrection.
Simply put, the Constitution and the Founding Fathers who created it and ratified it were quite clear. Insurrection, armed rebellion (or armed 'protest', a hair splitting semantic distinction where there is no substantive difference), like those of Shay's rebellion and the Whiskey rebellion from the 1780s and 90s and the Civil War of the mid 1800s. Armed rebellion (and any attempt at secession other than through the peaceful provisions and processes of the Constitution) is ILLEGAL; it is TREASON. People who do so are not patriots, they are criminals -- usually very stupid criminals.
Every attempt to engage is such a rebellion has been put down by the legal authority of the government, without exception. If there was any such legitimate right, it would have been acknowledged before now. There isn't any such 'right', not in the 2A, not anywhere in the Constitution. Further while there were some real 'fire-breathers' among the 'Founding Fathers' prior to and during the American Revolution who claimed certain 'rights' of revolt, once they put together a government after the Revolution, their political thinking matured and they no longer espoused those beliefs. They clearly repudiated them.
There IS NO RIGHT, Constitutional or 'Innate' to armed rebellion or even to own weapons of lethal force. When those who crave such weapons, who have a deep-seated emotional dependency on them act violently, or otherwise act illegally, it is not noble, it is a crime, often a crime committed clumsily and stupidly.
Those on the side of public health and public safety and proven regulation that results in lower gun crime and less gun violence, both fatal and non-fatal, are not impressed by the threats or the actions from the gun nuts. Those who make threats and act on them are criminals; those who just make threats are a nasty joke, a bunch of vicious blowhards and delusional fanatics. And the rest are a lot of bellicose posers full of a lot of stinky hot air.
