<font color='black' size='3' face='Times New Roman, Times, serif'><font size="3">Sending two OpEd pieces for Monday and Tuesday. The intended audience are readers in Saipan.</font>
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<div><font size="3">Sending it to this listserv, in case, anyone is interested.</font></div>
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<div><font size="3">Monday on Guns is along our currently gun conversation.</font></div>
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<div><font size="3">Sending articles separately.<br>
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<div style="font-size: 16px; clear: both; ">j'aime la vie
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<div><i style="background-color: white; "><font color="#000080"><b>Yesterday, appreciate; tomorrow, anticipate; today, participate. In all, Celebrate!</b></font></i></div>
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<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 18px; "><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; ">GUNS</span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 18px; "><span style="font-family:"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 18px; "><span style="font-family:">The
Sandy Hook incident in Newton, Connecticut had our President drop a tear and
lowered the flags of the nation at half-mast.
In a shooting rampage reportedly of one named Ryan Lanza, 27 people were
killed, 20 of them children. The school
has students from kindergarten to fourth grade.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 18px; "><span style="font-family:"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 18px; "><span style="font-family:">Two
hundred twenty-one years ago, December 15, 1791, the United States Congress
passed the Bill of Rights. <span style="color:#1A1A1A">The Second Amendment is worded, "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." The first comma is missing in the version
ratified by the States. No matter, the
right to bear arms is the intent of the amendment.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 18px; "><span style="font-family:"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 18px; "><span style="font-family:">During America's revolutionary period, there were many reasons
to protect one's right to bear arms.
Wikipedia lists the following in no particular order: </span><span style="font-family:">deterring tyrannical government,<span style="color:#1A1A1A"> </span>repelling invasion, suppressing insurrection, facilitating
a natural right of self-defense, participating in law enforcement, and enabling
the people to organize a militia system.
The image of the <i>Minuteman </i>in
Lexington, MA is in every American's mental playground!</span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 18px; "><span style="font-family:"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 18px; "><span style="font-family:">In
my social process scheme of the economic, political, and cultural dynamics, the
impetus for the legislation in the political was the desire to maintain
domestic tranquility. Case law has since
evolved to define that right, and to this day, the right to bear arms remains a
US constitutional right fervently defended by the powerful Vienna, VA-based
NRA.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 18px; "><span style="font-family:"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 18px; "><span style="font-family:">In
light of the recent assault on the American consciousness brought about by the
Sandy Hook incident, preceded by the Oregon Mall, Aurora Cinema, and the
Columbine rampage, we must once again raise the issue of individual rights up
before the mirror of social responsibility.
Surely, the question of securing domestic tranquility has gone way
beyond the capabilities of hand guns and assault weapons, but in our cultural
heritage is a deeply seated defense of the "gun culture", from Paul
Revere's alert of the Red Coat's heading to Concord's armory, to our Texan's
ever vigilant call to remember the Alamo.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 18px; "><span style="font-family:"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 18px; ">A
country that spends half of its discretionary budget on defense spending is not
too distant from a culture of mass destruction.
Defense right (in the language of homeland security) is foisted as a
rationale to maintaining order, domestically and globally, in an unruly
universe, by the self-appointed police of the world.</span><font face="Times New Roman, Times, serif" size="4"> The metaphors of competition, conflict, and war remain as the primary image of our social discourse.</font><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"></font></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 18px; "><span style="font-family:"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 18px; "><span style="font-family:">On
the personal level, one of our own Saipan residents, after his home and his
diminutive wife was assaulted by an intruder, opined on the "draconian gun
ban" in the CNMI. He wrote in the
ST in 2010: <i>"Gun ownership in the
United States of America is a right, not a privilege. Owning a car is a privilege. Owning a cell phone is a privilege, Internet
access... a privilege, having Cable TV... a privilege... Self-defense is a right!"</i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 18px; "><i><span style="font-family:"> </span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 18px; "><span style="font-family:">Our
sympathies are with the writer. We do
note that any gun ban in American territory has been observed in the breach
rather than the rule. My impression of
how authorities handle handguns and assault weapons in their personal
capacities is not a favorable one. The
traffic of guns in the Pacific reportedly occurs in the confluence of criminal
elements under legal cover.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 18px; "><span style="font-family:"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 18px; "><span style="font-family:">Individual
rights are always weighted in the context of social responsibility. The historical context to guns in America is
domestic tranquility, and that cannot be maintained and sustained by simply
allowing citizens the right to bear arms.
In fact, the record holds the reverse.
Believing that access to tools to inflict fatal solution on unwanted
intrusions has only been exploited by the malcontents against the unwary, and
the innocents are known to suffer.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 18px; "><span style="font-family:"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 18px; "><span style="font-family:">We
think of the British ban on guns, and the unarmed Bobby of London. The Yakuza, known to inflict muscle on the
strength of the bullet, has not been deterred by Japan's banning of the
handguns, a reason often used to returning the right to bear arms back to
Nippon's citizens. The throve of
Japanese tourists in shooting galleries in Saipan and all throughout the
Pacific (Waikiki hand bills shows bikini-clad girls holding riffles) shows a
native fascination with guns in Japan since Commodore Perry alighted on its
shores.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 18px; "><span style="font-family:"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 18px; "><span style="font-family:">In
2008, figures reveal that of the 12,000 homicide cases involving handguns in
the US, there were 11 in Japan. The US
has the loosest restriction in owning handguns in the world! Japan holds one of the strictest. There were two handgun-related homicides
reported last year.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 18px; "><span style="font-family:"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 18px; "><span style="font-family:">What
is clear to me is to have a national and local conversation on the second
amendment, then move it into every family's dining table (Kilili's office might
want to get some figures from CNMI's experience in aid of legislation). If guns remain as the toy of choice (because
they are cheap as well as preferred) under the Christmas tree this season, then
we further the culture of guns in a manner as casually as we hold motherhood
and apple pie.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 18px; "><span style="font-family:"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 18px; "><span style="font-family:">In
China's latest assault on schoolchildren, 22 were reported to have been slashed
with the knife. Just think if the
despairing culprit had a gun!</span></div>
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<div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 18px; clear: both; "><a style="font:lighter 10px Verdana, Arial;color:#000000;"><img align="absmiddle" border="0" src="http://presence.mail.aol.com/mailsig/?sn=jrvergarajr2031"></a> <font color="black" size="2" face="arial">j'aime la vie
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<div><i><font class="Apple-style-span" color="#ff0000"><b>Yesterday, appreciate; tomorrow, anticipate; today, participate. In all, </b></font></i></div>
<div><i><font class="Apple-style-span" color="#ff0000"><b>Celebrate!</b></font></i></div>
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