A Texas man accidentally shot a child while officiating a wedding in Lancaster County on Saturday, the sheriff’s office says.
Chief Deputy Ben Houchin said deputies were sent to a wedding at Hillside Events near Denton on a report of a gunshot wound.
Deputies learned that 62-year-old Michael Gardner, the wedding’s officiant, fired a gun to get everyone’s attention.
“He was going to fire in the air, and as he did that, it slipped and went off,” Houchin said.
The gun was loaded with a blank that Gardner made with gunpowder and glue.
I hate to argue against you because I agree that nobody needs a hundred round clip or full auto for an intruder, but the forefathers’ intended right wasn’t “people should have muskets”. It was much closer to “the people should be armed in case of tyrrany by their government”. The intention was for people to defend their other rights by force, making it more difficult for the government (or an invading force) to take over (this was immediately post-revolution mind you and much of the bill of rights was in direct response to british soldiers’ activities). Of course they also thought we’d be reforming the government and drafting new constitutions as the culture changed, but of course that never happened.
I am not a historian, just a pedant.
I mean I get you are playing Devil’s advocate but its clear we have also moved far those ideals. You are right the founding fathers didn’t just say “people should have muskets” but we also have to think in the context of the times, private companies were also able to be armed with naval cannons but in the modern day I don’t think Pepsi, Coke, Johnson and Johnson, or Nestle have an battalion of M1 Abrams and F22 raptors and the such. Like we are told we have the right to bear arms and in those days would be able to purchase the same arms that the military uses but I don’t think I would want a world where every idiot can somehow afford and operate nukes, apache helicopters, etc. Hell while full automatic weapons aren’t “technically” illegal in the US they are heavily regulated and expensive to possess and we the common people are boxed out owning such devices. So its clear we are “compromising” on the vision already quite a bit. Hell I would hope even some of the most die hard conservatives would think a private citizen owning the right such devices would be a bit much as well.