The Right to Bear Arms

The Right to Bear Arms

We have, in the United States, the right to own firearms. It is granted by the 2nd Amendment to the Constitution. That amendment actually refers specifically to creating and maintaining a militia, and that has been used to argue that it was not intended to protect ownership of firearms by individual private citizens. That argument sounds like quibbling to me. I think it clear that we have the right to possess guns. Not all guns, though, are legal. It takes a specials license to authorize ownership of automatic weapons. I don’t think sawed-off shotguns are legal for anybody. Convicted felons are prohibited from gun ownership, but apart from that, pretty much anybody can walk into a store and purchase a firearm.

I accept gun ownership as a right, but the attitudes of a lot of people on this subject border on deranged. Lots of people own guns, but some folks are totally in love with them. It is bizarre. They buy a new one every time they can afford it. They keep boxes and boxes of ammunition. And they talk about them all the time. I just don’t get it. I mean, I like my television, but I do not buy another one every other month so I can have more of them.

I grew up in a house with lots of guns. Pistols (revolvers and semi-automatics), rifles, and shotguns. My father’s affection for firearms did not pass on to me. I have owned several at different points in my life, but never more than two at any one time. Right now I just have one. It is a 50 caliber muzzle loader, and it could justifiably be called a cannon. Absolutely worthless for home defense, though. It fires one shot and then it takes (well, it takes me, anyway) about a minute-and-a-half to reload. This is actually a better, more accurate weapon than the ones the founding fathers had when they wrote the 2nd Amendment.

Maybe if we just tweaked the law a little bit so anybody could own a gun, as long as it was the same type that existed in the eighteenth century, we would not have so many mass shootings. That wild man in Tucson could have shot just one person. He would have been taken down before he could have a chance to reload.