Hiding out

From Kitty Loco Designs

The news today scares me, again. So I'm going to spend the next few days hiding out, not going into any places where somebody might be out with a gun. Like Starbucks. Or a department store.

You might have heard about the Supreme Court ruling that was passed today, making sure than gun owners will not be hindered in their right to bear arms. Of course, this means everybody, anywhere, for any reason has this right. Right? I certainly hope not. But the way the gun control opponents are celebrating this ruling does not make me feel any safer.

I just finished reading the whole page on Wikipedia about the Second Amendment, trying to figure out how we got here, and it's fascinating to me how much of a difference in interpretation you can get by simply changing punctuation within a sentence. Take this one, for example. On September 4, 1789, the Senate voted to change the language of the Second Amendment by removing the definition of militia, and striking the conscientious objector clause:

A well regulated militia, being the best security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.

A few days later, the Senate then slightly modified the language and voted to return the Bill of Rights to the House. The final version passed by the Senate was:

A well regulated militia being the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.

No wonder there is so much controversy now about what the Second Amendment actually means. But for now, I'm just going to hide away until it feels safe to venture out of my home. There is some really good reading in both of those links, the first from Yahoo News about today's decision and the other from Wikipedia. I've spent quite a bit of time this morning wondering about the wisdom of this 5-4 Supreme Court ruling.
:-{