Guns, yes. Well regulated, yes

One last observation about my column on Wednesday. I wrote: "As far as I am concerned, people can keep their guns for self-protection or hunting as long as they are 'well regulated' - to use the forgotten words of the Second Amendment."

One reader suggested I do a follow-up column on what I mean by that. Fair enough, but I think this might be a better forum; I want to move on in the column to happier topics if I can.

I deliberately kept the "well regulated" reference vague because I didn't want to be accused of using the deaths of the officers to make an explicit political point. I just wanted to support the idea of government of the people, by the people and for the people against those who would make it perish from the earth.

How naive I was. Several readers accused me of politics anyway, saying shame on me, they were affronted and so forth and such like. Yes, what a bad man I am, standing up for decency and responsible behavior.

As it happens, the vast majority of readers I heard from loved the column and took it in the spirit in which I wrote it, but any columnist finds himself besieged by moral and intellectual pygmies from time to time.

To be fair to the small ones, I think the implication was there that "well regulated" might include keeping AK-47s out of the hands of idiots. But there's more to it than that.

For some time now, I have believed that to bring sanity to the debate about the Second Amendment we need to look at what the amendment actually says. It's only 27 words and it begins like this: "A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state ..."

Those words are a bit of an embarrassment to gun lovers - they claim an individual right to own guns and that collective word militia mucks it up. That is why I said "well regulated" are the forgotten words - conveniently forgotten, in fact.

Last year, in finding for the first time an individual right to own guns, Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia devoted almost 56 pages of his 64-page opinion to explain why those few inconvenient words at the start of the amendment don't mean what they seem to mean. A tiger in a circus couldn't have jumped through more hoops to make his point (and some say it is only liberals judges who are activist!).

But presumably those words do mean something. They weren't included just for ornamental effect. While I take the plain reading of the words, which suggest disciplined limits on the basic right, I do take the point that words change meanings over centuries.

One reader wrote: "In the historic context the term ‘well regulated' meant that so the government did not have to bear the cost of arming its populace in case of war, insurrection (implicitly to prevent tyranny) etc. Well-regulated means well appointed."

But the meaning of the words is hardly as settled as this thoughtful and courteous reader suggested (and indeed, four learned justices did not agree with Scalia's interpretation in the case last year, which, by the way, renders ridiculous the widely circulated suggestion that "Obama will take away our guns." Not with this court he won't).

And here's another reader's version of what it means:

" ‘Well regulated', at the time of the writing of the 2nd Amendment, meant, WELL-TRAINED, NOT, as left-wing, anti-freedom maggots and bureaucrats think, well CONTROLLED by out-of-control big government. Get your facts straight before you make idiotic statements."

I know, I know, this is what I have to deal with (did I mention being besieged by moral and intellectual pygmies?) Still, I certainly will be careful in the future to get my facts straight before I make idiotic statements.

Actually, I would take "well-trained" as the definition because that at least shows some promise of reducing gun deaths.

Guns are not going away in America. That's the reality. For my part, I recognize gun ownership as a right (I think "militia" can be read as individuals in a group). I do not think it is an unlimited right - all our rights end at the point where they deny other people's rights.

I think it would help a lot if potential gun owners had to take a course in weapons, if they were "well-trained" to use the reader's definition. This might have weeded out the nut job in the Stanton Heights killings.

If it were up to me, I would exempt anybody in the armed forces or honorably discharged from the armed forces from the need to take a course - on the theory that they had been well-trained in the proper use of weapons and were imbued with a sense of responsibility concerning their use. Police officers would also get a pass.

Everybody else would be required to take a firearms course, say one night a week for six to eight weeks, but nothing too arduous that had the effect of denying the basic right by other means. While this would be required by law, the government needn't be the one who did the training. I wouldn't mind if the National Rifle Association did the work. Whatever else might be said of them, they know their guns.

I would introduce this requirement in stages. I would require it at first only of new gun owners after a certain date. Anybody who could prove they owned their weapons before then would not be affected - which would limit the opposition.

By insisting on the "well regulated" part of the amendment, we would eventually have individuals who could really make a difference to the security of a free state.