Your Second Amendment in Action

Dontavious Mays is the name of a little guy from Northeast Baltimore city. Last Saturday, he was wounded by a bullet while he was playing outside at around 5 pm. Does anyone think that it should be unsafe for a six-year-old to play outside in his own neighborhood at dinnertime on a warm summer Saturday?

And I'm not going to get into a gun control debate or discussion. If you feel that the Second Amendment extends the rights of militia membership to local drug dealers, I'm just gonna ask how well-regulated that militia is, and all I'd get would be fatuous answers about how the Second Amendment protects us all from jackbooted stormtroopers showing up late at night, searching our houses and seizing the precious firearms that we all need in case of insurrection, or if the guy who breaks in to rip off the combo DVD player/microwave/fax machine should forget to pack his weapon and Harry Homeowner comes downstairs to play Dirty Harry Homeowner, only he's wearing those slippers with no heels, and some rather seedy pajamas, so the burglar laughs at him and so on and so forth. Not going there.

What really sticks with me about this story is that, when the reporter on FOX45 covered it, he mentioned quite dispassionately that young Dontavious was shot while "two men were exchanging gunfire nearby." Just like that, as if it were a fact of daily life. People exchange ideas, phone numbers, email addresses, baseball cards, insurance information after a traffic accident, and the dumb heelless slippers that everyone, including career criminals, laughs at when you wear them. Most guys exchange them for those slippers that sort of look like camp moccasins. It just should not be accepted in the course of human events that two random men should exchange gunfire at 5 PM on a sunny summer Saturday while a six-year old is playing outside.

Anyone else feeling it?