But what Dick Metcalf leaves out is that, after a lifetime marinating in American “gun culture,” he didn’t understand the phrase “a well regulated militia” in the Second Amendment.
Either he honestly didn’t know what 18th century dictionaries say it means or he was being deliberately obtuse.
Oh, and by the way:
Certainly the founders meant Americans to “bear” military grade arms. One cannot be a member of a para-military group using small caliber plinkers and varmint guns. In their day arms meant military weapons. Muskets, pistols, even swords were “arms.” Cannons, land mines, and ships of war, however, were the “weapons of mass destruction” of the founder’s era. They never expected that the people had any right to those weapons of war. Such weapons of mass destruction are more properly, then and now, called ordnance as opposed to arms. It is also why the Navy is dealt with elsewhere in the Constitution.
Both are kind of a big deal when you’re a columnist for Guns & Ammo and not, say, a student weekly or even The Atlantic Monthly.
Imagine a lifelong columnist for Scientific American not only coming out against Darwin’s theory of evolution, but making his case based upon a quirky interpretation of the phrase “natural selection.”
