As you all probably know, at least 31 people, including the gunmen, were killed on the Virginia Tech campus this morning. The details of the incidents (the gunman started shooting at a dorm, and then, two hours later, attacked a classroom) are horrifying.
This article appears in Apr 12-18, 2007.
Shall I launch the inevitable gun-control argument? Here is the full text of the Second Amendment: “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.” Did the shooter (a South Korean, by the way, not even a US citizen) belong to a “well regulated militia”? I think not. Seems to me that neither this mass murderer nor, for that matter, my law-abiding gun-collecting friend Emil Franzi has an absolute right to bear arms without enrollment in a WELL-REGULATED militia. Here’s part of what Elliott Glicksman had to say on the subject in a Tucson Weekly article back in 2001:
“Let’s not argue about Second Amendment rights. Under the longstanding interpretation of the Constitution, the Second Amendment only gives a collective right to bear arms to militias, not a private right to individual citizens. The gun lobby knows this; it is for precisely this reason that, with all their rhetoric about the Second Amendment, this issue wasn’t even raised in the Arizona Appellate Courts when the gun lobby challenged the Tucson City Council’s ban on guns in public parks. In fact, the Second Amendment argument was conspicuously omitted from their brief.”
Seems to me that this tragedy and many others could have been avoided if people actually read, understood and complied with the first phrase of the Second Amendment. Do we have the will to prevent future tragedies? Or will our public safety continue to be compromised by paranoid gun-hoarders who refuse to acknowledge the obvious intent of the Second Amendment?
Most dat legitimate (as in Constitutionally-sanctioned) well regulated militia is over Iraq “protecting” us from from some dumbass civil war Bush enabled/blundered into and that dude al-Qaeda. Which probably also ain’t what dem authors had in mind. And dey didn’t want atomistic selfish cynics messing with their work either. yepyepyep.
(though it be total blast if dey sue to get onto UA campus protect us like they do on private property down on the Mexico border, dem Minutemen)