The price of a well-regulated militia is pretty high:
In December, we tracked 92 shooting incidents in Philadelphia, including nine double shootings and two triple shootings, for a total of 105 gunshot victims, based on original reporting, media reports and other sources at the GunCrisis Reporting Project…
…December totals represent a steep rise from the 64 incidents, 68 victims and 17 fatalities we counted in November, but still add up to less than the 111 people who were shot in Philadelphia during October and the 140 people wounded or killed in August.
It’s amazing that muskets could cause this much heartbreak.
Meh, street gangs need to start calling themselves militias and they will have even more help from the NRA.
But the vast majority of the casualties were insurrectionists or invaders!
Although the second amendment, if taken literally, is obviously obsolete, I have lately been trying to understand how it could apply. Because it has to apply if it has any legal validity. And one thing that’s clear is that you don’t get a well-regulated militia out of mayhem like this. The logic of the amendment suggests to me that the entire retail arms sector should be licensed and regulated through and by the National Guard.
“Regulated” means “trained” in the sense of an “army regular.” That’s what the second amendment wording means in a straight, English reading, and it is how it has generally been interpreted in courts. It means that in order to better supply a quickly recruited military force with people used to using weapons, the government can’t prohibit the ownership and use of them. However, it is pretty clear that the purpose of the individual right to keep and bear arms is a public, collective one, not one for individual enjoyment, which has always opened the door to substantial, common sense regulation of weapons and their use in the country.
Yes, I agree. And my point was just that a lot of the people that own weapons are more likely to abuse them than use them properly. Using a weapon properly demands not only technique but also character, moral discipline and judgment of a very high “calibre”. Obviously this applies to those that acquire them illegally, but also to much that goes on legally.
Add Insurance to the regulatory system.