Delaware Dem

If you could rewrite the 2nd Amendment, how would you do it?

It is as if our Founding Fathers were high when they wrote this:

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.

It is as if Yoda was a Founding Father, and if he was that would be awesome, but we are still left with awkward backward sentences. In my mind, when I read the second amendment, it looks and sounds like two sentences got smashed together in a head on collision: “A well regulated Militia is necessary to the security of a free State” and “The right of the people to keep and bear Arms shall not be infringed.”

The two sentences are mutually exclusive. The latter sentence establishes an absolute right to bear arms without any interference from Congress, including, presumably as to what constitutes “Arms,” since that term is not defined. So, if you look at only that sentence, as most gun nuts and the NRA does, you believe you have an absolute right to own a nuclear missle launcher, a bazooka, a tank, and 100 AR-15s.

Meanwhile, the former sentence says a regulated milita (militia at the time being a group of community citizens with guns) is necessary to the security of the free state. To me, that sentence as two interpretations: 1) the defense of a free state requires a well regulated militia, thus the state is responsible for establishing and regulating a militia, and 2) militias, or community citizens with guns, need to be regulated by the state to ensure the security of a free state, otherwise it is an OK Corral out there and no one is secure or safe.

Either interpretation of the former sentence requires state regulation of the right to own guns. Which is wholly incompatable with the latter sentence guaranteeing a uninfringed and absolute right to bear arms. And yet Yoda and the Founding Fathers smashed those two sentences together anyway.

I think there is a consensus in this country on guns, however, despite the rhetoric on the fringes where on one side there is an absolute right to bear arms and on the other where all guns should be banned.

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Thursday Open Thread [4.11.13]

John Dickerson is right: “The Obama strategy relies on theater. There is nothing substantively new about Obama’s budget plan. He has offered versions of the same plan (i.e. Chained CPI) privately to Republican leaders, but now he’s trying to go around those leaders. One requirement for building trust with Republican senators is putting these offers on paper. This is meant to show individual senators that he is making good on the promises he has made in private conversations, but it also offers them the cover they need with their constituents. If senators are going to flirt with tax increases, they have to show their voters that they purchased something in return. Now they can point to the president’s public effort on entitlements. But wait, how do we know that Obama is really making a sacrifice? Just look at how upset his supporters are.”

So you progressives and liberals and Democrats who are mad as hell and are screaming at the top of your lungs: keep doing it. It is what Obama wants you to do. You are doing your part in this theater.

Meanwhile, Greg Sargent explains why Obama wants a Grand Bargain in the first place and details his strategy to that underlies the current maneuverings over the budget….

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