Albert Camus once wrote a short story, and then an expanded play, entitled "The Misunderstanding." In this story -- the plots of the play and short story are identical -- a boy becomes estranged from his mother and sister in a rural town somewhere. And to make a short story shorter, the man comes back years later a big success, with great riches to bestow upon his estranged and poor family -- bringing his wife and children along with him.
The twist: The man decides not to surprise his family immediately but rather to stay a night at the little inn they run in that small rural town. You know, to see them in their element as they have grown in years. He sets his own family up in the nicer hotel in town: this is a search he must go on alone. The mother and sister proceed to kill the man, strip him of his watch, jewelry and several thousand or so francs -- no small sum to them -- and dump his corpse in the river.
(I never said it was a good story. Even Camus misses once in a while.)
The Founding Fathers once wrote, "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed." They called it the Second Amendment to the Constitution of the United States of America.
On April 16, five faculty members and twenty-eight students -- including the gunman -- died in another suicidal student shooting, this time at Virginia Tech. Twenty-nine more were injured.
I do not see too many militias around, and the ones I hear about are generally on the FBI's watch-list anyway. So, I guess a well-regulated militia has ceased to be 'necessary for the security of the freedom of our state(s)'. It also seems to me that the Founders protected the right to bear arms so as to provide for militias and militias alone.
No militias needed, no arms needed. No militias, no right to bear arms.
Additionally, take a closer look at the punctuation of the amendment, specifically the commas. If read without the two modifying clauses in the middle formed by these commas, the amendment reads, "A well regulated militia shall not be infringed." It was the militias the Framers meant to protect, not the guns.
I go so far as to say that there is no constitutional right to bear arms. None. Not unless employed for a now useless State militia. Any grammarian or English teacher would have to agree. Do the deconstruction. It all adds up.
Twist: I did not finish recounting Camus' story, "The Misunderstanding". The man's family -- his wife and children -- came the next day to meet the man's sister and mother, assuming by this time, the man would have told them of his true identity.
The mother and sister, upon hearing of what they'd done -- upon the acknowledgment of their guilt -- both take their own lives in shame and despair.
Should we, the American society that gave rise to this incident, feel responsible for it?
No, we didn't pull the trigger like Seung-Hui Cho or the mother and sister in "The Misunderstanding." Nor did we consciously antagonize this obviously troubled young man. But we did allow him to buy a gun.
And surely for that we are guilty: We allow pretty much anyone to purchase a gun without sufficient background checks or waiting periods -- gun-show in the back, anyone? No waiting period for gun shows... Oh, sure, you can have the semi-automatic too. Extra magazines are two for the price of one.
What do we do, then, in response to our guilt? We don't take our own lives as the mother and sister did. Nor should we: Our culpability is less. But we are still culpable.
So we write op-eds; we pontificate; we beg; we blame. We wonder why, when the answer is staring us in the face: Interpret the Second Amendment as it should be -- outdated and thus nullified. A strict constructionist method leads us to a progressive conclusion.
Sometimes -- sometimes -- in allegory and grammar lieth Truth.
