GUNS AND TECHNOLOGY

Here's the problem with the Constitution's Second Amendment: technology. When the Bill of Rights−with the Second Amendment−was adopted in 1791, "arms" were ye olde muzzle-loading musket, ye olde flintlock pistol, in short, ye olde old. Two rounds a minute would be a good rate of fire with these weapons.

Today, "arms" might, depending on who is doing the defining, include a fully automatic AR-15 spitting out 800 rounds per minute. How long would it take a Revolutionary War soldier to fire 800 rounds? At two rounds a minute, 400 hundred minutes, or more than six and a half hours.

So a Constitutional provision that protected the right to own a weapon firing two rounds a minute is now protecting the right to spray 800 rounds a minute? Even if the Constitutional protection is limited to semi-automatic weapons, an AR-15 in semi-automatic mode can spew 50 or more rounds a minute, depending on the quickness of the shooter's trigger finger and the size of the weapon's magazine. In the Founding Fathers' era, a shooter would need close to half an hour to get off 50 rounds.

Maybe it's time to repeal the Second Amendment, or at least adopt Justice Antonin Scalia's strict constructionist approach to Constitutional interpretation: the Constitution means what it meant when adopted in the closing years of the 18th Century. As for the term "arms," that means the Second Amendment's protection is limited to two rounds per minute.

What say you, NRA?