This may come as a shock, but I do understand the logic of the citizenry being able to remove an elected official from office when he refuses to go at the end of his term or after lawful removal (e.g. impeachment). Seems to me that that's the only legitimate excuse for taking up arms against the government. Everything else is covered by that democracy stuff. Calling the policies of the duly elected government "socialist" doesn't come close to meeting that standard.

Sometimes, for the mental exercize, I play What Would the Founders Do?, imagining I travelled back in time to have an ale with the boys at the end of a hot afternoon wrangling the Constitution. Much of the imaginary fun comes from amazing them with tales of how their creation turned out. Sometimes, though, I imagine my stories might appall them.

If I were to drop in on Mr. Coxe at his newspaper office, and discuss the birthright to possess "terrible implement(s) of the soldier", I'd point out to him that his imagination failed him badly. Terrible? I'd tell him about the powerful bomb that America developed in the mid 20th Century, one of which could flatten his beloved Philadelphia and burn with a flame so hot it would turn the soil to glass and boil away the rivers. I'd ask him if he really thought it would be wise to allow or even encourage every American to possess one of those terrible implements.

That's what modern lawyers call "trotting out the horribles", painting the worst-case scenario, and Mr. Coxe might reasonably split the difference, and say, no citizens shouldn't possess H-bombs, but firearms remain acceptable. I might then tell him about cordite and other modern smokeless powders, and about the newfangled rifles we have that can fire hundreds of rounds per minute and disintegrate the very bosom of the next man. I'd tell him about flechette pistols. I'd tell him all about our wondrous armory of terrible implemtns of the soldier, the rocket-propelled-grenades, the shoulder-fired missiles, contact mines and claymore mines and other man-shredders. I'd tell him about mustard gas and anthrax and sarin.

And I'd ask Mr. Coxe again if he still thought that the citizens should possess all the terrible implements of the soldier.

And I wonder if he might have second thoughts?

A wise man once said that the Constitution is not a suicide pact. Seems to me that slavish devotion to the Second Amendment in light of the terrible weaponry we've developed is indistinguishable from suicide.