Let's Focus on the General Welfare

I am an anomaly. A native Texan, I grew up with guns; I received my first rifle as a birthday present when I was six, and my grandmother taught me how to shoot. At seventeen, I joined the army and served for 20 years, in military intelligence and special operations, retiring from the service 29 years ago. I have also been a member of the National Rifle Association. Taking all that into account, one might think I'm strongly against gun control efforts in the United States.

One would be totally wrong. I have spent my entire adult life supporting and defending the Constitution, but the amendment that guarantees the right to "bear arms" is not one that I am comfortable with - at least, not the way it's interpreted by many Americans.

After two decades in uniform, including two tours in Vietnam during some of the most violent periods of that war, I have seen all too often what guns in the wrong hands can do. I have agonized time and time again when guns in the hands of nuts have wreaked havoc in my beloved country; from the Kennedy brothers to Martin Luther King, Jr., to innocent students on a number of campuses. I have listened to all the arguments about how stricter controls over access to guns and ammunition will not prevent such tragedies; how if we more strictly control guns, only the crooks will have guns, and frankly, I'm not buying it. Oh sure, organized criminal gangs will probably always somehow get their hands on weapons, but the tragedies that have brought so much pain to so many people were not perpetrated by criminal gangs. The Kennedy brothers were killed by disturbed loners, acting alone, and able to carry out their dastardly deeds because they could easily obtain the means to do so. James Earl Ray, King's assassin, falls into the same category. The school shootings were carried out by disturbed young people who could all too easily get their hands on guns to carry out their dark dreams.

When the Second Amendment was put into the Constitution, we were a frontier nation. People lived in often isolated settlements, with no police protection. We didn't have a real standing army, and frankly, given their feelings against imperial armed forces, I don't think the Founding Fathers even envisioned us having one. It was, therefore, necessary to ensure a means of citizens protecting themselves. I think that if the framers of the Constitution were alive today, in their wisdom, they would hasten to amend that amendment to make it fit the reality of modern life.

A well-regulated militia is not meant to cover the survivalist nuts who take to the hills awaiting the coming Armageddon; nor does the 'right to bear arms' mean that every disturbed, macho gun nut have the right to buy automatic rifles or armor piercing ammunition and use them to exorcise the demons that inhabit his nightmares.

The Constitution is also designed to ensure the common welfare. It's time we did just that.