The tragedies mount.  In a matter of seconds, precious life has been torn apart, riddled with bullet holes.  Terror strikes and cannot be understood.  Whether it happens in a kindergarten or a high school or at a movie theater or at a religious shrine or in a mall or at a workplace or at a political gathering, it’s the same thing.  The perpetrators get their hands on semi-automatic weapons somehow, legally or illegally.  The weapons are there for the taking, and in the warped minds of those who want to kill the weapons start it all, providing visions of massive destruction, each warped mind wanting to outdo the carnage of the ones who have come before.  Guns breed violence.  They create mental pictures of bodies strewn about on floors flooding with blood.  When turned on oneself, the gun promises an end to the pains of life and an avoidance of responsibility for one’s actions. 

 But we’re told that, because of the Second Amendment, there must be no restrictions whatsoever on gun manufacture, sale, or ownership.  The gun enthusiasts believe, in my opinion, that God has granted a right to own whatever type of gun one wants to own, and the Second Amendment is only a reflection of what God Himself has granted.  I beg to differ.

 There’s nothing absolute about the Bill of Rights.  There’s nothing absolute about what people believed were their rights when the Constitution was drafted.  Case in point: the Founding Fathers believed that slavery was appropriate and that slave owners had a right to the services of their slaves.  Yet, the time came for the Thirteenth Amendment, abolishing slavery. 

 The concept of rights must evolve if we are not to be burdened with doctrines of a past long gone.  So let’s include in our discussions about what to do about mass slaughter by semi-automatic weapons whether it’s time to abolish or substantially modify the Second Amendment.  Let’s go back to the beginning.  We’re creating the kind of society we want our children and grandchildren to live in.  We take the pen in our hands.