Legal Gun Owners?

My response to a Saint Pete Times editorial of May 30, 2009,

"Guns Don't Belong in National Parks"


Thank you Senator Tom Coburn.

While a long history of sniping attacks on the meaning and scope of the second amendment has resulted in a state of affairs where gun owners are commonly regarded today as less than mentally stable right wing nuts, you have had the courage to stand up and point out the necessity for the inclusion of this provision in our Constitution. Indeed, dating back to the Magna Carta and before that to The Assize of Arms, all free men should be required to 'bear arms' to 'provide for the common defense'. In the case of the Magna Carta that common defense even extends to the right and obligation to revolt against the King. Any King.
(Any of you liberals want to check how well this right worked for our founding fathers?)

While it nonetheless goes without saying that the individual bearing arms has a responsibility to use them well and with skill, the second amendment, notwithstanding the various illegal specific infringements, permits us to own and carry them anywhere we see fit. After all, the framers of our Constitution knew well that governments fear nothing so much as an armed populace.