America's and Americans' fascination with guns never ceases to amaze, particularly the belief that, if everyone carried one, the whole nation would be safer. Don't these people understand that guns are weapons of death and the fewer people who have them the better, the safer society will be, and the fewer deaths there will be?
Apparently not: the US Supreme Court is about to deliver a verdict that, pundits predict, will declare that Washington's ban on the possession of handguns is unconstitutional, backing a federal appeals court judgment that the ban violates the Second Amendment.
Apparently not: a popular programme on CNN recently did an expose, claiming that only 1 per cent of almost 30,000 flights a day landing or taking off from the US had armed federal air marshals on board and pleading for more armed guards for the safety of passengers.
The gun lobby told the Supreme Court that the Second Amendment gives individuals the unassailable right to own guns. The amendment is so clumsily written that any junior editor would immediately demand that it be rewritten to make its meaning clear. It declares:
'A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.' In the versions passed by the American states, the word 'people' also got a capital 'P' and 'militia' and 'arms' were relegated to a small 'm' and 'a', respectively.
The question that has bothered lawmakers and judges is what has primacy in this proposition: the militia and the security of the free state, or the individual's right to bear arms - or, as the National Rifle Association and other supporters have put it, to own guns?
