"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 abridged."
Second Amendment to the Constitution

We may not know much of the details of our Constitution, at least not in our daily lives, but the Second Amendment has been shaken in our faces with great regularity by the gun lobby or the gun nuts or those who value our freedom, depending upon your point of view.

The Second Amendment was framed in times of muzzle-loading rifles, but the Constitution doesn't speak of that, perhaps not having foreseen the killing power of modern automatic weaponry. It is silent on ammunition for that bearing-of-arms, perhaps not having foreseen armor-piercing bullets that will and do and are meant to penetrate a policeman's protective vest. That amendment was written for a small population, comfortable with the bearing of arms and still taming a mostly wild country, a constituency fresh from having just thrown off a hated monarchy.

We are no longer a small population, are increasingly uncomfortable with guns and living in a land where, for the most part, law and order prevail. Where law and order most often fail us, it is at the hands of those who bear those constitutionally protected arms against our own citizenry. We are, so far as I know, still prevented from the private ownership of tanks, bazookas, flame-throwers and fully-automatic machine-guns. But anyone with a modicum of skills can re-convert a legally altered weapon to automatic status.

Every public poll in recent times shows over sixty-percent of the population in favor of gun control. Particularly in the big cities, we're increasingly scared to death and there's a tendency now on the part of the states to extend legally the carrying of arms by private citizens, mostly as a result of those fears. We're too large and fearful a population to begin hauling guns around the streets with any degree of competence.

But they say guns don't kill, people kill and they are right, it certainly isn't squirrels causing all that mayhem. We are at the same time critically awash in gun laws and critically awash in killing. There is a legitimate argument in favor of our freedoms at stake. Certainly a foreign power or even an evil turn of our own government would be hard-pressed to enforce a lasting takeover of those freedoms, well armed as we are.

I guess I have to state my position, the direction from which my wind blows. I am a hunter and occasional skeet-shooter, but I don't own a handgun. I had one once and it made me nervous to have, made me know every time that I looked at it that its prime purpose was to shoot another human and I'd like not to do that. But I would do it. My home was once broken into violently and I was fortunate to scare off the intruders, but I remember standing there with a shotgun aimed at what was now the splintered casing of my missing front door and being willing to kill whoever filled that hole. I'm not proud of that, but know I'd feel the same way again and act on it, should the necessity once again present itself.

So, I don't own a handgun or a bazooka, at least not so far. But therein lies the hitch. We are becoming such an intolerant nation, so fearful of one another as we crowd more into the impersonalized cities, that our guns threaten to become more and more out of control. The growing gulf between haves and have-nots, all of us fully armed, is a very scary thing to contemplate. Peace, as I have said elsewhere, is not found at the tip of a sword.

For my own part and having agonized in my mind over the pros and cons, I am willing to stand by the letter of the Constitution. Not comfortable, not by any means at ease with it, but willing to trust in private arms over public government, not knowing a better way.

There are few areas in which I feel federal law should take blanket precedence over state or local law, but gun law is one of them. It is the federal Constitution that claims this right to bear arms and my feeling at this time is that a single federal law should prevail, not in place of, but in addition to all others. Any crime, from a misdemeanor to a felony in which a gun is used or even carried, should exact a mandatory federal five-year term in addition to whatever other sentence is handed down. In the case of a plea-bargain or suspended sentence, the federal term would still apply and be carried out without parole.

We would make the imperfect bargain that gun ownership is a protected right, but improper gun use is a severely punishable crime. One right available, one responsibility equally required at the federal level. I doubt that even the NRA could argue with that.

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