I am stunned by your prolific efforts to advance writing as a craft. Having said that, I agree with you on this topic. What escapes me is the unwillingness on the part of radical conservatives to allow licensing, sales control, & monitoring of deadly weapons. Do they think the founders didn’t consider it right to sequester madmen from owning deadly weapons? Didn’t the authorities know nearly everyone had to be armed as a deterrent in a largely lawless world? Yet had someone displayed criminal or aberrant tendencies, they would not have hesitated to remove deadly weapons from their grasp, personally if necessary. I own several weapons, but refuse to participate in the perversion of sports hunting. I am not a member of the N.R.A. I keep my guns locked up in a safe.I don’t object to legal registration, as long as due process existed to protect my second amendment privileges. So what’s behind this mule-headed objection culture? It’s the same old thing I think, self-interest trumping all else. That epidemic pervades everything in modern life, and its immense dynamic is eroding the progress of the hundreds of bloody, cruel centuries that wised us up as what a code of moral and responsible action ought to contain. The Amendment doesn’t need to protect lawless savages, money-grubbers who profit by the trade in ever-deadlier and more capable arms, mental defectives who believe the profession of an enforcer gives the right to pass judgment themselves save when lives are truly at risk, or hoarders who think displaying a perverse affection for the tools of death is akin to religion. The 2nd. needs to protect the right of us to save ourselves when confronted with deadly force or from official tyranny beyond the rule of law. I fail to see what bearing ‘infringement’ plays in civilized approaches to an issue such as this. That language was crafted to keep tyrants from seizing our arms to stifle dissent. I hope the Congress, the States and the Courts can be persuaded to agree.