“I am not an advocate for frequent changes in laws and Constitutions. But laws and institutions must go hand in hand with the progress of the human mind. As that becomes more developed, more enlightened, as new discoveries are made, new truths discovered and manners and opinions change, with the change of circumstances, institutions must advance also to keep pace with the times. We might as well require a man to wear still the coat which fitted him when a boy as civilized society to remain ever under the regimen of their barbarous ancestors.” ― Thomas Jefferson

Thomas Jefferson, Founding Father and third President of these United States in The Declaration of Independence speaks of the Inalienable Rights – Life, Liberty, the Pursuit of Happiness. While the Declaration does not indicate those are the only inalienable rights, it enumerates no others leaving one to speculate.

What happens when a right, enumerated in the Bill of Rights comes into conflict with these Inalienable Rights?

“…laws and institutions must go hand in hand with the progress of the human mind.”

While the human mind has progressed in many ways, in some ways, the human mind in the United States seems to have regressed into the very barbarism that Jefferson warns against. 6 -18 School shootings (depending on who you ask, as if any number over 1 matters) so far in 2018… and we’re only on day 38.

“…institutions must advance also to keep pace with the times…”

In the Fox River Grove bus-train collision, 7 students were killed, and 24 injured. Following the 1995 disaster, transportation regulators investigated what went wrong and made dozens of changes at 16 different local, state, and federal agencies.

And yet, since 1927, 284 people have died in school shootings, and 386 injured, with little or no real action to seek a real resolution. All under the vanguard of protecting the rights of gun owners.

While I’ll be lambasted as yet another anti-gun libtard, I believe that history shows us the solution in places like the United Kingdom and Australia. Put simply, since 1996, the U.K. has not seen a single school shooting. The U.S. has seen 235. That is unacceptable.

To those who would rail against me, I say this. I have, since coming of age, been a staunch advocate of the 2nd Amendment. I myself am a veteran, a gun owner, I have been a firearms instructor. I regularly carry a firearm in my daily life. But now, given the frequency of mass shootings, and in particular mass shootings at public schools, I must question the value of the 2nd Amendment as written.

LIFE is our most important right and when other rights interfere with that right, then we must reexamine those rights in light of our duty to ensure that other people’s right to life is not unnecessarily violated. When a liberty threatens that right, the very bedrock of freedom, it is a cancer and it must be excised.

Arguments for the right to bear arms by the general public, particularly military style arms, grow stale in the face of hundreds of dying children. That said, it gives us a place to start. Initiating an assault weapons ban, a buyback, and criminalizing possession of assault style weapons and high capacity magazines will go a long way towards securing our schools, and our country.

Thomas Jefferson also said, “The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.” He did not say the blood of innocent children. If children paying the price for this singular liberty is acceptable to you, then I would argue that you are the tyrant.