Fundamental Right to Kill ? Narasimhan Vijayaraghavan Fundamental Right to Kill? This is America. The land of the free. With fundamental rights to Freedoms. Including ‘ Right to hold Arms/guns”. After Buffalo, New York, ten African Americans killed last week, it is now twenty killed in Texas. All in the name of Second Amendment to the oldest and famed US Constitution.

Fundamental Right to Kill ?
Narasimhan Vijayaraghavan

Fundamental Right to Kill? This is America. The land of the free. With fundamental rights to Freedoms. Including ‘ Right to hold Arms/guns”.
After Buffalo, New York, ten African Americans killed last week, it is now twenty killed in Texas. All in the name of Second Amendment to the oldest and famed US Constitution.

Second Amendment reads in simple words: A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.It is a fundamental right. Upheld by the US Supreme Court multiple times including in District of Columbia v. Heller, 554 U.S. 570 (2008), a landmark decision of the US Supreme Court that the Second Amendment to US Constitution gave individual’s right to keep and bear arms, unconnected with service in a militia, for traditionally lawful purposes, such as self-defense within the home, and that the District of Columbia’s handgun ban and requirement that lawfully owned rifles, shotguns kept “unloaded and disassembled or bound by a trigger lock, violated this guarantee.It also stated that the right to bear arms is not unlimited and that guns and gun ownership would continue to be regulated. It was the first Supreme Court case to decide whether the Second Amendment protects an individual right to keep and bear arms for self-defense or if the right was intended for state militias.

The news today is: The number of people confirmed killed in a school shooting in Uvalde, Texas, has risen to 20, according to Sgt. Erick Estrada of the Texas Department of Public Safety. Estrada told CNN that 18 children, likely between the ages of 7 and 9, and two adults are among the dead. The shooter is also deceased.

Estrada also offered new details about the events leading up to the horrific slaughter at Robb Elementary School, about 85 miles south of San Antonio. According to calls to law enforcement beginning at around 11:20 a.m. local time, the gunman, who has been identified as an 18-year-old male resident of Uvalde, shot his grandmother at her home before heading toward the school in a large, dark truck. He crashed the vehicle in a ditch near the small campus.

Callers told law enforcement that he was seen exiting the truck carrying “some sort of rifle,” a backpack, and wearing body armor. The gunman made his way into the school building through a south facing door and began shooting, Estrada said.It is unclear if the shooter had a specific target or targets in minds.

POTUS Josef R Biden was disgusted. Sad. Furious. Angry. Anguished. But truth to tell- Raging Impotent. Nothing he can do, you see. The US American Gun Lobby led by the National Rifle Association ( NRA) is just ‘too powerful and with second amendment rights it is overwhelming and immovable’. Nothing, just nothing that Biden or White House can even think or do.They can talk. Tall Talk. Until the next carnage happens in another County, District, State in the nation.

It is utterly shameful that Americans enjoy the Fundamental Right to hold Arms/Guns. Not to Kill? But To hunt. To defend. Lobbying is legal in USA. It comes from their liberal Constitution, as practice of ‘participative democracy’. Money Talks. As Lobbying is all about Money. In 2019 alone, lobbyists spent $3.47 billion on influencing political policy, representing the highest sum spend on lobbying since lobbying spend peaked in 2010.It has grown at 20% during 2020-2022. With Nov,2022 Mid term elections, it is burgeoning day by day.

Congressional changes are providing increased opportunities for lobby groups to use political influence as a means to create productive legislation, and with an increase in lobby dollars being spent it is timely to remember both why lobbying is legal, and why lobbying is important for a productive government.

And NRA is the biggest Donor and Lobbyist. NRA stands for National Rifle Association. The group was founded in 1871 by two US Civil War veterans as a recreational group designed to “promote and encourage rifle shooting on a scientific basis”.The NRA’s path into political lobbying began in 1934 when it started mailing members with information about upcoming firearms bills. The association supported two major gun control acts, the National Firearms Act of 1934 (NFA) and Gun Control Act of 1968 (GCA), but became more politically active following the passage of the GCA in the 1970s.

The NRA has lobbied heavily against all forms of gun control and argued aggressively that more guns make the country safer. It relies on, and staunchly defends, a disputed interpretation of the Second Amendment to the US Constitution, which it argues gives US citizens the rights to bear arms without any government oversight.

Our founders took ‘ideas’ from the US Constitution. In fact, several democracies, the world over,borrowed from the US’. Oh my god! How lucky we and most other countries are, not to borrow this ridiculous idea of ‘freedom to hold arms’. Honestly, a plain reading of the history of the amendment can be easily interpreted, read and understood as ‘rights’ in the hands of ‘militia’. Not in the hands of ‘ We the People’ in America.

It is singularly unfortunate that SCOTUS has refused to bite this ‘bullet’. First Amendment a.k.a. Freedom of Speech is sacrosanct. Second Amendment a.k.a. Right to hold Guns is even more, it seems. Skewed priorities. Nothing less than LUNACY of LUNATICS in the name of the Constitution. Skewed and crazy in the name of Freedom.

It is all Lobbying and Money Stupid!

What Freedom are we and they taking about?

Fundamental Right & Freedom to Kill!

( Author of Constitution- its Making(2020) & Working (2021), OakBridge -and practising advocate in the Madras High Court)