Overheard an interesting comment in the bathroom today: "Oh come on, do the cops really need *tanks*?" Yes, man at the urinal. Yes they do. Because the second amendment in the Bill of Rights says this: 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.

One of the things that always stuck out to me in this amendment was word "militia". Now, when we think of the militia in the United States, the image that always gets conjured up in our minds is that of the Minute Men, the semi-organized farmers and tinsmiths and woodcutters that were essential to victory in the Revolutionary War. I was surprised to learn that the "militia" actually consists of every able-bodied person not currently wearing a uniform.

In other words, anyone who can pick up a weapon and use it. Excluding the elderly, the children, and the infirm, everybody is the militia. We all are. You, me, everybody.

So, the framers' thinking at the time was, if every able-bodied citizen is armed, who's going to mess with us? And you know what? It works. The rest of the world sees America as a bunch of gun-toting crazies that you don't mess with or they'll drop bombs on you. We're scary. We're safe because we're scary. It's crude, but it's effective.

But, the price we pay for a heavily-armed militia is decreased safety domestically. We have more gun violence here in the US than almost anywhere else in the world. If we're serious about this, if we're serious about allowing our citizens to purchase and use AR-15s or any other weaponry they want, then yes, the police are going to need tanks. They're going to need vests. They're going to need shields and helmets and tear gas, and yes, they're going to need guns.

And, they are, by nature, going to always err on the side of caution. They're just as scared of getting shot as you are. They're going to frequently shoot first and ask questions later. You want to know where all these awful stories about police brutality in the news are coming from? There you go. Welcome to America. Land of the free, home of the guns. And the brave, sure. Having a gun doesn't make you brave, but it sure makes being brave a lot easier. That's what the founding fathers were counting on.

I'm not against the second amendment. Like I said, I think it works. The guns can stay, it's the gun violence that needs to go. If you want gun violence in America to decrease, you don't take away the guns, you take away the poverty. You take away the racism, the piss poor education system, the skyrocketing cost of college, the ridiculous price of healthcare, and the nonliving wage. You stop taking away the funding and benefits from the police department and you *definitely* don't take funding away from the social assistance programs that are keeping poor people from becoming desperate people.

The middle and upper class tend to treat the lower class like dogs, so let's go with that analogy. The lower class is a dog. It's dangerous because it's sick and it's starving, and its home is abusive and negligent. It'll do anything. The lower class is a hungry, diseased mongrel, wandering around in your neighborhood.

You can fix this one of three ways. First, you can put the dog down. That's not really an option in this metaphor, so, moving on.

Second, you can try to pull it's teeth so it's not dangerous anymore. (We've come to the gun control metaphor at this point.) This is absurd. It doesn't solve anything for the dog, and the dog's not just going to *let* you pull its teeth out. You'll probably get bitten in the process. Still, I guess it's marginally easier than the third option.

Third, you can feed the dog. Take it to the vet and make it healthy. Get it into a loving home. Teach it some new tricks. Now you have a happy, healthy, hardworking dog that's not dangerous anymore, and you didn't have to pull its teeth.

Yes. Absolutely. The third option is a sincere pain in the ass, and it's not going to work in every situation, but there is no question (at least in my mind) that it is the right thing to do. It's the harder task, it'll take longer, and no one really wants that responsibility, but it is the only real long-term solution.