After the most recent school shootings earlier this month, liberals are at it again. It is everyone and everything else’s fault, not the actual people who committed the crimes.

Of course, the liberals are now on another rant over gun control. All of the sudden, triggers are pulling themselves again and every gun-fearing leftist in this country has to live life worried about the next-door neighbor walking over and shooting them.

Liberals have to victimize themselves over everything in order to argue their case. It is the typical response to any issue, they think with their hearts rather than their brains. They seem to be supporting a good cause, but it usually ends up making things worse than before.

Imagine that handguns were illegal. Every criminal on the street would probably have one, but the law-abiding citizens are left with nothing to protect themselves.

Some of the biggest advocates of gun control are celebrities -including Alec Baldwin and the ever so-not-funny Rosie O’Donnell. The only funny thing to ever come out of her mouth is her arguments for more gun control. I say they are funny because she ignores bits and pieces of the document that puts food on her table, the U.S. Constitution.

The First Amendment lets her shoot off her mouth whenever she wants by guaranteeing her right to free speech. Yet Rosie completely ignores the Second Amendment and acts as if it does not exist.

Liberals like Rosie hate the Second Amendment. Because it is a part of one of the greatest documents the world has ever seen, they can’t get rid of it, so they choose to ignore it. They also distort its meaning by telling you it doesn’t give anyone the right to own a gun.

“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.”

Clearly it says we as citizens have the right to bear arms.

There is another, much more powerful anti-gun group out there right now, the liberal media. Liberal members of the press have been anti-gun since gun control has been an issue. This is perhaps the most disturbing group of people to oppose guns.

They, along with most bleeding-heart liberals, say too many people die from guns every year, so there needs to be more control over them.

The press runs into the same problem good ol’ Rosie ran into with the Constitution, but it goes even further.

Liberals insist lives could be saved with more gun control, but what they are ignoring is the fact that lives could be saved if we imposed more regulations on the press.

According to statistics from the ISU Department of Psychology, media violence is more closely related to aggression than condom use is to preventing the sexual transmission of HIV.

In the study, a score of one showed a perfect positive correlation and negative one showed a perfect negative correlation. Zero signified no correlation. Media violence and aggression had a correlation of .3; condom use and the spread of sexually transmitted HIV scored negative .18. By the looks of it, all the violence in the media is causing aggression, but we put up with it because a free press serves as a benefit to democracy.

Lives could be saved if we did not have an entirely free press. Ted Bundy said pornography led him to go on a killing spree, but that is still around. It would be insane to take that right away from citizens; our Constitution guarantees it, just as it does the right to bear arms.

How many people die due to abortion? That has a perfect 1.0 correlation. Every abortion ends the life of a baby. Whether you consider it murder is another thing, but the life of the baby does end. We don’t outlaw abortion, and that is not even mentioned in the Constitution.

The point is this country tolerates a number of mishappenings in order to ensure personal freedom to its citizens. Just look at our courts: We let guilty people go free in order to do our best to prevent the innocent from being locked up. We tolerate a few mistakes with guns because they are the back bone of every other right guaranteed in the Constitution.

Two former editors from the Yale Law Journal, Akil Reed Amar and Allen Hirsch, wrote “Framers recognized that self-government requires the people’s access to bullets as well as ballots.”

Many people have come to think that guns are not the back bone of our society and we will never have to worry about an oppressive government in the 21st century, but they could not be more wrong.

Tell that to the people of Iraq, who have their lives run by a dictator. If they had “access to bullets,” Saddam would be in for a real treat. Unfortunately, the citizens of that nation cannot bear arms, and therefore they cannot overthrow their tyrannical government.

James Madison wrote, “The Constitution preserves the advantage of being armed which Americans possess over almost every other nation, where the government is afraid to trust people with arms.”

Like them or not, guns are what set us apart from most other countries. It is time to be proud of the fact we can bear arms – most people don’t have that right.

Zach Calef is a sophomore in journalism and mass communication from Cedar Rapids.