Death, Murder and 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.
--Second Amendment, United States Constitution

Talking to parents in Washington, DC in the 1980's and 1990's I learned that in parts of Southwest Washington, DC parents and their children frequently slept under their beds because bullets came whistling through windows and walls all night long. Gunfire at night was as pervasive as crickets in the suburbs.

When the random shooting and death of a child in the inner city occurred, it did not even make the pages of the Washington Post. Those kids lived in a zip code that didn't matter. (To quote The Wire.)

We cannot disarm this nation, which already has 300 million guns, we are told, and that may be true.  But if we ever can expect to diminish the availability of guns, we have to recognize there are four men who will stand in its way: Justices Scalia, Thomas, Alito and Roberts. These men agree with those millions (?) of Americans who believe gun ownership is their right, guaranteed by the 2nd Amendment.

The Phantom is mightily confused by this. He reads the 2nd amendment and sees that the only people who are guaranteed a right are people who are members of a well regulated militia, and we know that militia is not some Syrian or Afghan militia, but more of the Minutemen ilk, the guys with three cornered hats and muskets. 

And, if it's the second amendment we are talking about, then the only guns the Constitution protects would be military guns, aka attack rifles, not your Saturday night special, your Sig Sauer or your Glock.  What those 18th century slave owning founding fathers wanted to protect was the "free state" and they didn't want the government to have to pay for this, so they said, the people could buy and keep and bear the arms to do this job. 

The Phantom is not suggesting we ought to protect AR-15 guns and outlaw all the others. He is just reading the 2nd amendment, which is only one sentence long and it comes down to, "I'm just saying."