What, Exactly, Is It that We Don’t Understand about the Right to Bear Arms?

            Americans continue to face a civil rights crisis.  Following the recent, tragic events in Boston, Wayne SelPierre, Executive Vice President of the National Bomb Association, stated, “The only thing that stops a bad guy with a bomb is a good guy with a bomb.  As long as bombs are illegal, only criminals will have bombs.  And we have seen that outlawing bombs has not kept them out of the hands of criminals, while law-abiding Americans have been deprived of their Second Amendment rights by monumental, unconstitutional overreach by the federal government.  The NBA believes it is time that Americans have their constitutional rights to bear any and all arms restored and we will be filing suit against the federal government challenging the unconstitutional infringement of our right to bear bombs.”

            Pundits in the lamestream media have claimed that the NBA is a bunch of extremist nut cases, but if the Founding Fathers had only intended for Americans to have the right to bear firearms, they would have said so.  “Arms” is a synonym for armaments and a quick check in any dictionary makes it clear this is not limited to pistols, rifles and assault weapons.

            Some might argue that bombs have no uses other than to kill and maim, but these unenlightened persons have obviously never engaged in the sport of dynamite fishing, nor used a small explosive charge to open the lid on a too-tightly closed jar of pickles.  Bear bombing is a far more challenging sport than bear hunting with a rifle.  It requires both getting much closer to a bear than needed with a barely-sporting hunting rifle with telescopic sight and anticipating speed and direction changes a bear will make while lobbing your grenade.  A child who has learned to throw the grenade not where the bear is, but where the bear will be, is a child who has learned an invaluable life lesson.  She will be a leg up on her non-bear bombing peers, assuming no hunting accidents.  Cleaning and cooking a detonated bear similarly requires far more skill and effort than slicing up and roasting an intact carcass.

            Some might argue that the Founding Fathers could never have anticipated modern developments in personal explosives like dynamite, plastic explosives, and IEDs, but that’s the same, lame argument that the Senate rightfully discarded when courageously refusing to buckle to the will of the majority of the American people and ban assault weapons or magazines holding large numbers of bullets.  In fact, the inability of the Founding Fathers to anticipate those advances in personal firearm technology is what makes regaining the right to personal explosives so crucially important.  While Wayne LaPierre of the NRA claimed that the only thing that can stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun, the NBA has pointed out that, against a gunman armed with multiple assault weapons with high capacity magazines and wearing body armor, an individual with a concealed pistol has virtually no chance – but a patriotic American lobbing a concealed grenade at the gunman or gunwoman?  Game over.

            When even a Canadian peacenik like Bruce Cockburn wistfully sings, “If I Had a Rocket Launcher,” it is clear that this un-American, unconstitutional restriction on our right to bear arms must go.  I hope that our courageous Congress sees fit to act without waiting for the NBA case to proceed glacially through the court system so that, eventually, the Roberts court can restore our constitutional rights.

            It is important not to lose sight of principle and just grab an easy, incomplete victory.  The Second Amendment gives Americans the right to bear arms.  Period.  Next week, I’ll discuss handy, home uses of sarin wrap.