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As someone who supports stronger gun control laws, I’m appalled by the sloppy and ill-informed arguments of most people who agree with me on this, especially as it relates to the Second Amendment to the Constitution.  I know that courts have weighed in with different opinions on this subject over the years, but the history behind the amendment and its plain language make it clear beyond question that it confers on (or rather preserves) the right of individual American citizens to keep and bear arms.

It reads as follows — “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.”

First of all, in Colonial America and during the time the Constitution was being written and debated, the “militia” referred to all able-bodied men in the country not serving in the armed forces.  It was not a standing organization of any kind but the pool of citizens from whom a military force could be drafted to meet various emergencies.

George Mason, one of the the driving forces behind the Bill Of Rights, stated that the “militia” constituted “the whole people”.  Seeking to assuage the fears of some about the potential power of a standing army, James Madison said that such an army, if it got out of bounds, “would be opposed [by] a militia amounting to near half a million of citizens with arms in their hands” — in other words the entire free male population of the new republic.

Second of all, each of the other nine amendments constituting the Bill Of Rights guarantees a right to individual citizens, not to states, and in the rest of the Constitution, “the people” refers only to individual citizens, not to states.  You have to read the Second Amendment as peculiarly anomalous to see it as guaranteeing a right to the states, the right to form state militias, and not to individual citizens.

If people want to infringe the right of individual citizens to keep and bear arms, they must support a new amendment to the Constitution explicitly revoking the Second Amendment.  That might or might not be a good idea, but its goal can’t be accomplished simply by misreading the Constitution.

The home front — with thanks to Season Skye . . .

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Last night I dreamed I was down in a Latin American country hoping to make a documentary about a revolution in progress there — a group of insurgents trying to overthrow a corrupt military dictatorship.

I’d gotten involved with a band of insurgents going off to free some prisoners from an army barracks in the capital city.  We were ambushed by soldiers along the way and had to try and fight our way out of the predicament.  I got hold of a rifle and fired back at the soldiers and escaped into a wealthy residential section of the city.

I hid my rifle in the bushes in front of a fancy home and knocked on its door.  There was a party going on inside.  I said I’d been invited to the party by the lady of the house.  Someone said, “Aren’t you that American who lives out back in the trailer and takes care of the garden?”  I said I was and they let me in.

Just then the lady of the house came downstairs to join the party.  She was old and bent and wore a heavy white veil.  I shook hands with her and said, “Thank you for inviting me to the party.”  She said, “I’m glad you could come.”

I met her daughter, a tall, strikingly beautiful blonde, who told me her husband had been killed in Peru making a film about a revolution there.  This prompted me to confess what I was doing at the party.  “You should meet my father,” she said.

She led me over to an old man seated in a chair.   He was alert and vigorous.  I told him how I’d gotten into the party and he laughed.  “If my wife were not so hospitable,” he said, “you would probably be dead now.”  Just then two soldiers appeared at the windows leading onto a veranda outside the room.  They pointed guns through the windows, told everyone to freeze and said they were going to search the house for insurgents.

The old man pulled a pistol from his belt, hidden under his coat, and shot both the soldiers dead.  He turned to me and said, “We have to talk.”

Then I woke up.