Let's start over on gun control

On the question of gun ownership, it is simply time to start over.

According to the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, the right of the people to keep and bear arms cannot be infringed because a well-regulated militia is necessary. In the absence of a well-regulated militia, unregulated gun ownership cannot be justified.

Furthermore, there is no reason to believe that the framers of the Constitution would approve today's weapons. In Samuel Johnson's dictionary (the one available to the Founding Fathers), "arms" was defined as "weapons of offence." The only such weapons available to individual soldiers of the Revolutionary War were smooth-bore flintlock muskets with bayonets, long guns, pistols and sabers.

To a strict constructionist, therefore, the Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms is limited to those weapons defined by the word "arms" at the time the framers wrote the word.

With, or without, a well-regulated militia, using the language of the framers to justify individual ownership of weapons that fire not one, but hundreds of rounds per minute is a leap too far.

Donald G. Westlake

Wheaton