Chuck Otey’s Pro Bono Barrister: Does Second Amendment also guarantee the right to slaughter people at will?
It’s been a crazy and distressing week, with the entire nation struggling, once again, to grasp a tragedy that, ironically, might not have resulted in the deaths of so many people had the murderer not been able to obtain a veritable machine gun, capable of firing hundreds of high-velocity bullets in very few minutes.
Shielded by an incredible decision by our Supreme Court that expands the right to bear arms vastly beyond anything the Constitutional framers had in mind — and could not have conceived in their wildest imaginations — too many leaders and political figures have stood by as hundreds, including children, have been massacred by mindless assassins in just the past few years.
Stirring credulity, some, including the terminally obtuse Donald Trump, claim that the slaughter of 49 people at a gay nightclub in Orlando might have been diminished if someone in the club had a gun. The facts now known show otherwise. In reality, there was an armed police officer at the Pulse club who tried to shoot the terrorist before so many died. But the heroic cop’s handgun was no match for the fusillade of bullets exploding from the barrel of an AR-15, a weapon designed for military use only.