Ted the Penguin

Historical Context

From The Shape of Days:

Ignorance of historical context is inexcusable. The Second Amendment has absolutely nothing to do with hunting. It’s about owning guns for the purpose of killing people. It was written during a time when the idea of peaceful political change was laughable; just a few years after its ratification, the good people of Paris effected their political change through repeated applications of short, sharp shocks on a thoroughly modern assembly line of death that for sheer efficiency would go unmatched until the rise of the Third Reich a century and a half later. The Second Amendment was put in place as a protection of last resort against tyranny ever again setting its booted foot on the North American continent.

True enough. And like Jeff, “Seeing a guy in the middle of the woods with a long rifle with a scope on it makes me think I should go make a new friend so I can find a reliable and generous source of venison. Seeing a guy carrying a pistol in the middle of a city makes me nervous as hell.”