Stand Up For The 2nd Amendment

It's happened again. In the United States a four year old boy has shot his mother. His mother is very pro-gun. On this occasion she had left a loaded gun on the back seat of her car. The boy picked it up and pulled the trigger.

Mommy is so keen on guns that she blogs about them. She wrote that her son is always "jacked up" when she takes him with her to the firing range. I assume she meant that he is excited. Well, he is four. Everything is exciting to a four year old. Especially things that go bang.

When mommy gets out of hospital I wonder if she will change her mind about guns. Will it occur to her that her son might have blown his own head off?

To be born American is to be born into a frightening maze of nonsense. The 2nd amendment to their Constitution says that there should be a well regulated militia, and to that end guarantees citizens the right to bear arms. Unfortunately there is no militia. The 2nd amendment is essentially meaningless. In any case, Congress could easily amend it again or delete it altogether.

Of course that won't happen. Many Americans regard it as a sacred text, beyond all logic.

It's all very sad. Children are shooting each other and their parents. Parents are shooting their own children in the dark thinking they are burglars. (Here's a tip: if someone is moving around the house at night it is most likely to be one of your own family.)

The men who wrote the 2nd amendment had good intentions in imagining a regulated militia and armed citizens. As time went by there was clearly no need for a militia, none was ever established, and there seemed no harm in letting people keep their single-shot muskets that took a minute to reload.

Two hundred years later the situation is something that even the brilliant Thomas Jefferson could not have imagined or foreseen.

If Congress does not have the courage to make the right to bear arms disappear from the Constitution I suggest it enforce a literal interpretation. All citizens shall have the right to bear single-shot muskets, and the implied obligation to surrender all other weapons. Congress shall establish a well regulated militia and require all citizens to march up and down their street every Friday night between 7 and 9pm bearing their arms.

I think Thomas Jefferson would approve.