A young man was recently sold a Mossberg 500 shotgun and casually shot two total strangers in a shopping mall. The man who sold him the gun said, without any sense of irony, that the gun was an “entry level” shotgun for “home defense”.

On an average day in America 32 people are murdered with a firearm, 140 people are treated for gun assault in an emergency room, 51 people kill themselves with a gun and 45 are shot or killed in accidents involving guns. (The Brady Campaign)

Was this intended by the framers of the Constitution? If so, I call for a Constitutional Convention to change it, on the grounds that those of us who live in America are anguished about the daily reports of gun violence, but are also in dire danger of becoming inured to it, and thus being morally corrupted. Epicureans should never grow accustomed to or tolerate casual violence and undeserved death, as if it were nothing more important than a daily traffic jam on the freeway. They must protest it and campaign to have it stopped.

Regrettably, given the indifferent mindset of so many people (presumably already inured to the low level civil war on our doorsteps)* a new version of the Constitution might well make carrying loaded guns mandatory at all times. Better scrap that idea!

* Would this casualty rate have been tolerated in Iraq, Afghanistan or Vietnam.