How Much Firepower is Enough?

Somewhere in the United States there is a person or a group of persons, with an arsenal to rival Stephen Paddock’s and with complete and unfettered access to bump stocks, who have been thinking about Mr. Paddock’s Las Vegas escapade and telling themselves they could “do it” better.

You know it. I know it. Every member of the Congress and the NRA knows it. Everybody knows it.

The Second Amendment guarantees the right to keep and bear firearms. The most advanced firearm at the time the amendment was written was a muzzle-loader. Everyone understood the firepower that a single citizen could reasonably own and manage.

A single, modern AR-15 assault rifle is more than the equal than several platoons of eighteenth century infantry carrying muzzle-loaders.

Paddock, while firing, was comparable to a hundreds of revolutionary era soldiers.

If a single person could have brought that kind of firepower to bear in the late eighteenth century, we can be certain the Second Amendment to the United States Constitution would include wording to limit the firepower a private citizen could have.

You know it. I know it. Everybody knows it.

It’s time for that wording to appear somewhere in law.