I want to keep this simple, because it is simple.

There is no individual right to firearms in the United States Constitution, as it was written by the American Founding Fathers. Below you will see the entire text of the Second Amendment, the only place in the Constitution in which gun "rights" are addressed.

I am well aware that the Constitution means what the Supreme Court says it means, and that in the last few years a rogue Court has made some disastrous rulings that re-interpreted (contrary to a great deal of Federal and State precedent) the Second Amendment as an individual right. We are stuck with that for now; but that doesn't mean that the Justices correctly understood the plain words of the Second, and it doesn't mean that we, as a supposedly civilized society, have to live with the social values imposed on us by the cowards of the so-called "gun-rights movement."

We can still hope that, one day, a wiser court will restore the meaning of the Second to what it says on its face. Failing that, we can hope that a wiser society with wiser values will simply repeal those words entirely. I understand that I am not going to sway the fanatics of the National Rifle Association, whose quotation of the Second on their headquarters building in Washington simply elides the first two phrases. Cowards lie, not least to themselves. This site is aimed at thoughtful Americans who may not now understand the true meaning of the Second, but who do understand that we have a serious problem with guns in our society; and that perhaps more guns—and a flawed interpretation of the Constitution, as well as of the underpinnings of true personal security—are not the answer to that problem.