Second Amendment

I don't usually praise any man, nor do I play politics much, so I can honestly say that President Obama's address in Newtown, Conn., this week was truly genuine ("'We have wept with you,' Obama says," Dec. 17). Many will say that his speech was a preface to more gun regulations, while others will call his prayer just amazing. Neither will be correct. What President Obama did that night wasn't just a speech or just a prayer. It was his true attempt to be the leader of our nation. He literally wanted to use his office for good.

As a father, I grieve with the rest of the country at the senseless loss of children's lives and the waste of human potential such tragedies represent. But I also refuse to remain silent and allow the elites and opportunists of the moment to take advantage of our collective grief and manipulate it for their own ends ("Teary Obama calls for action after massacre," Dec. 15). More restrictive gun laws are not the answer. If that logic prevailed, cars would be surrounded by inflatable bumpers and go no faster than 20 mph, household chemicals would be banned, and one would need a license from social services to have children.

I received a note a couple of days ago from a gentleman concerned about the placement of commas in the various drafts of the Second Amendment. And today, at The New Yorker , Jeffrey Toobin writes that "the text of the amendment is divided into two clauses and is, as a whole, ungrammatical. " Well, The New Yorker may not be the best place to go for instruction on grammar and usage . The Founders (it's a little vexing to have to keep explaining this ) loved Latinate constructions, one of which is the absolute, a phrase modifying a whole clause, often consisting of a noun and a participle.

Newtown, Conn., has just experienced the single most horrid gun tragedy in our nation's history. Yet we are admonished once more that to raise the issue of gun control in the aftermath of such tragedy is untimely or even opportunistic. It is, of course, neither. Claiming that it is somehow inappropriate politicizing to point out how our current legal climate facilitates, or at least contributes to, these horrors is offensive. More to the point, the argument against relying on such events to discuss how our understanding of the right to bear arms has run amok rests on false premises.

Back in 2008 I put up a short post on the grammar of the Second Amendment , pointing out that the introductory absolute puts the right of bearing arms in the context of the establishment of a militia. It would have been interesting to expand on that in discussion, but, as you can see from the comments, the immediate response was vilification, under the assumption that I was one of those gutless liberals trying to take away all the guns.* All I was saying is that the amendment as the Founders composed it put the right in the context of the militia, and I think that that is indisputable to anyone who can comprehend straightforward English.

People getting killed in Colorado. High school student shot in Baltimore. It's a wonder more people aren't shot with guns, so readily available in the USA. This is not what the forefathers had in mind when they wrote the Second Amendment, because if they knew guns would do this destruction, they would not have written the amendment. Also, the government doesn't have a clue how to solve this. Thomas Coburn, Rosedale

As Eliza Doolittle put it in "My Fair Lady": "Words, words words, I'm so sick of words!" Once again, in the wake of the latest shooting spree in Colorado, presidential candidates Barack Obama and Mitt Romney ran a race to the microphones to deplore it, with more words of sympathy than promises or plans to do anything about it. Mr. Obama, who hops aboard Air Force One at the drop of a megabucks fund-raiser these days, jetted out to Colorado to commiserate...

The brouhaha over Attorney General Eric Holder and the contempt of Congress charge brought by U.S. Rep. Darrell Issa is providing new evidence that the lunatics are running the Republican asylum. Mr. Issa, the California Republican who is chairman of the House Oversight Committee, would have us believe President Obama's assertion of executive privilege in the dispute -- "an eleventh-hour stunt," he called it on Fox News -- is part of a White House cover up of something much more sinister.

Kudos to Dan Rodricks for his article comparing the Avi and Eliyahu Werdesheim case to the shooting death of Trayvon Martin ("The difference is a gun," April 29). He is 100 percent right in his analysis. I just wish more legislators would listen to common sense. A gun kills on contact, period. How many more people will have to die before we think of better ways to interpret the Second Amendment? Unfortunately, we will always find hatred, vengeance or racism somewhere in someone's heart.

The Sun should be commended for publishing such an extensive article on the "right to carry" laws in Maryland and putting it in clear terms that anyone can understand ("Gun laws' sketchy effect," March 11). The bottom line, according to the academics, is that restrictions or a lack of restrictions make no difference. However, it's complicated because on one hand, "the right to carry" concealed guns does decrease the murder rates and on the other hand, "the right to carry" will "slightly increase the number of aggravated assaults.