Guns Are People, Too

We know that Scaley and his Goth-garbed gang down in DC have ruled that Corporations are people, too. Or persons, if there is a difference. As a consequence, Corporations have the right to buy Congressman's ear outright, just as you or I could had we a bottomless purse.

Not the bottomless purse my wife used to use. That one had everything required for a fortnight stay on a desert island, in full makeup. Everything except for Congressman-level cash.

It is no surprise, then, that we learn that guns have rights, too, just like you and me.

Is this old Scaley and his judgmental henchmen? Not so fast, cynics.

First, some background.

Thanks to the AP, we woke the other day to find that two of the guns used in the recent shooting at the Pentagon and the one in Vegas came... Where? Venezuela? Russia? China? South Carolina?

Ever hear Marc Cohn's song Walking In Memphis? (If not, buy it right now at underlined Amazon link left. This post can wait. The song is a classic.)

These two guns did their walking in Memphis. Right out of the police locker, apparently.

The Memphis cops seized the guns in criminal cases, as they do all guns in all criminal cases, and stowed them until it was time to part with them at the end of a case. As the top public safety organization in Memphis, the cops surely destroyed all these guns, so that they--the guns--would never threaten the citizenry or the cops again.

Or not.

Not in Memphis. The police in Memphis, and other places in Tennessee, have the option to destroy confiscated guns or trade them in for other stuff, like new guns and the bulletproof vests they'll need when the formerly confiscated guns are aimed right back at them.

In Tennessee, the cops had the rights. Until March 4, 2010, the same ironic day as the Pentagon shootings. On that day, Tennessee's governor, Phil Bredesen, cheerfully signed a new law that gives the guns their own rights. Now, the Memphis cops, even though scandalized by the misuse of their once-seized weapons in DC and Vegas, are second fiddle to the weapons themselves.

Thanks to Gov. Phil and the boys, your Tennessee gun has rights. It can not be destroyed any more than you or me under TBO's health care reform. Unless the weapon, if seized in a criminal case, is old or so screwed up it doesn't work at all. Until it is no longer useful, that seized gun gets to be set free into the wild, just like your pet gator when if reaches ten feet long.

How this new law came about is anybody's guess. I'm sure fiscal arguments were pitched into the legislature and the NRA has always felt that the right to a gun means the gun has rights. Maybe Christians were for it, since it seemed the confiscated guns were going down a right-less black hole and Christians don't believe God allows black holes any more than evolving genomes.

The new Tennessee law may have a Three Strikes rule for all I know, just like the one for human offenders. They can be branded with one or more big "A" (for "Again"), like a spared Nazi in "Inglourious Basterds". Any gun seized three times, that is, one carrying two big A's, in a criminal case in Tennessee gets locked up until it won't work any more. At that point, someone in authority can deny that gun any further gun-oil treatment. It's on to its final repair. By cremation.

There is one problem that the politicians in Tennessee missed. If guns are people, too, what happens to the axiom, "Guns Don't Kill People, People Kill People". This new Tennessee law messes up this Eleventh Commandment royally.

Maybe this slogan, having served so well over time but now inoperable, as well as unsafe, should be tossed into the smelter, too.