With the growing savagery of gun slaughter and the unwillingness of government at any level to do anything, Americans are reaping the fruit of one of the most successfully laid plots in history--the purchase of government by powerful interests and the re-interpretation of 225 years of constitutional law to enrich those interests.
I'm speaking specifically of the National Rifle Association, of which I was once a member, although the purchase of government leaders by other great moneyed interests can be seen everywhere, from Washington to Little Rock.
Let's recount a little history. When the 13 colonies ratified a new constitution to create a strong national government capable of raising a federal army, they adopted the Second Amendment to reassure some states that the federal government would not abolish their citizen militias, which they needed to control slaves, Indians and rebellions or attacks by foreign groups from the western territories.
It said: "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." The first 13 words spelled out the purpose of the final 14 words.
State militias, sometimes brought into federal service, formed the brunt of American defense until after the Spanish-American War. State militias were then formalized as the National Guard, under mixed state and federal control, and became a reserve military force sometimes deployed in foreign wars. Federal, state and local governments often passed laws regulating the sale and use of guns.
That is how the Second Amendment was viewed by courts everywhere until 2008, when the U.S. Supreme Court held, 5 to 4, in District of Columbia v. Heller that it meant more--that people had a right, though not an
