View from the Outside

This editorial ran in The People’s Daily Online, one of the state-run Chinese news agencies.  Honestly, it’s a telling view of how our Constitution is viewed from the outside looking in; as well as the lack of regard for personal liberty held by the Chinese government.

Each shooting triggers intense community debate for a time. People will ask the government to tighten controls on firearms. These arguments rush in like a monsoon: stay for a while, and then leave. However, the United States has not truly banned individual possession of firearms.

Which are of coursed effectively banned in the PRC.  The author seems genuinely confused at this point, as she expounds further below.

The number of privately owned firearms in the United States ranks first in the world: almost one firearm per person. There is an argument that says guns – like hamburgers, hot dogs and rock and roll – are an inseparable part of US culture. The harsh life in early period of immigration to North America might be one reason for this particular culture. But even nowadays, when the United States has become the world’s richest and most developed country, the American people’s “gun complex” remains unchanged.

It is not that the “harsh life” of early Americans entrenched a gun culture in the nation, but rather a culture of liberty.  And while she seems to grasp the concept of “firearms = civil right” as an academic idea in America; she doesn’t seem to quite have it down.

In the United States, the freedom to possess guns is regarded as a human right. The first article of the Amendment to the United States Constitution guarantees the freedom of speech. The second determines the rights of citizens with guns.

But that’s not what the 2nd Amendment does.  Yes, it enshrines civilian ownership of firearms in the Constitution, held in equal regard with the right to free speech.  But it’s primary purpose was to prevent tyrannical governments from oppressing the people; tyrannical governments like your very own leaders, Ms. Xiaoning.

That’s the disconnect – the American belief that the individual often carries more value than the collective as a whole; our nation is founded on the concept of personal liberty.  That concept is (brutally) suppressed even today in China.

3 Comments

  1. That’s the disconnect – the American belief that the individual often carries more value than the collective as a whole; our nation is founded on the concept of personal liberty.

    And yet, while valuable, that very concept often causes as many problems as it solves.

  2. It’s almost like you want me to quote the Founding Fathers.

    I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too much liberty than to those attending too small a degree of it. – Thomas Jefferson

  3. We do have problems with our mental health system, namely that we can’t lock up anyone until after they commit brutal crimes. And, sometimes even then we can’t keep them locked up for long.

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