Ted Rall Gets It

[legion]

Okay, so he gets this one thing. To say that he gets all of "it" is patently false. I usually cringe as I read the title of his columns and the disbelief and anger builds as he constructs an elaborate straw man in his articles and then tears it down--all to prove how evil conservatives are.

This is the guy who tried to revive the Vietnam-era practice of calling soldiers "baby killers". Yes, he's that despicable.

But he gets this one thing right.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ucru/20080703/cm_ucru/constitutionagravelacarte

Partisanship is healthy. Creating your own Constitution around your personal stand on the issues is un-American.

As a holistic advocate of the Bill of Rights, I agree with the D.C. gun ban ruling. When the Constitution was signed in 1787, all land-owning white men--the class of citizens whose voting rights it guaranteed--owned (or were allowed to buy) guns. A "well-regulated militia" was usually an ad hoc affair, a group of guys called up for up to a year (often less) to respond to the threat of, for example, an Indian attack.

Today the Bill of Rights applies to everyone, even illegal immigrants. Moreover, while militias have gone the way of the musket, it's a fair bet that the government would ask ordinary citizens to use personal firearms to defend U.S. territory in the event of an invasion--i.e., form militias. Why, then, shouldn't the 18th century right to own a gun, which applied to everyone covered by the Constitution at the time, apply to everyone now?

There's also a practical argument. As history proves, every government falls. Every nation gets invaded. No one knows when it will happen in any given case, but thus far it's proved inevitable. When the U.S. government turns against its people, gun nuts will be in a far better position to resist than the double decaf latte types on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. We'll all be praising Charlton Heston's memory when foreign troops are marching down Broadway.