Really? My mental gymnastics? I’m going to give you two quotes:

There is no Constitutional right to serve...but you have the right to TRY. You aren’t guaranteed a chance or opportunity to serve, but you have the right to a chance like everyone else. You have the right to free travel, but you do not have the right to drive...you have the right to TRY to prove your ability and…

Do you think, then, that the government should not mandate anything with cars, or trucks? The government should not mandate safety regulations? Food standards? Anything?

Ah! So what you’re saying is that you do NOT, in fact, have an unfettered right to firearms. That, in fact, that right should be restricted or regulated.

Ah: so there are mitigating factors to your right to enlist (and yes, it is a right, which anyone, green card holders included, have in this country), as the military feels there is a standard you might not be able to uphold. A standard that might cause you to put others in the service at risk.

...so what you’re saying is, seeing as dangerous as firearms are, there should be less of them on the streets?

And you have the individual right to join the National Guard: we can always use the help.

Here, I’ll clear it up: if you send your nudes to someone, when they didn’t ask for it, and then demand they send nudes back...you are engaging in predatory behavior. Regardless of gender.

Doing this is better than fleeing. Teach a kid to do this, then you can teach them carefully backing away.

We have amazing technology all over the country that, whenever that same technology presents a threat, gains some sort of regulatory practice. Cell phone batteries that explode are recalled and destroyed. Explosives are tightly controlled, and the materials to make them equally controlled.

This is true: a well-regulated militia, in fact, would need modern rifles, vehicles, the devices to destroy those vehicles, indirect fires assets, and the training necessary to utilize those items in the defense of the state.

Before long, we’re going to be seeing recreations of the Sandbar Fight in every county, from the Sabine to the Caprock.

Okay...why?

Texas clearly is: it is now legal in the state of Texas to freely carry swords, spears, just about any bladed weapon under the sun.

...it’s full of stars?

Ignoring the snideness of your statement, arms does not exclude firearms. But arms is such a broad term, that any ‘set’ or ‘subset’ in there could be excluded, so long as the intent (the right to possess a weapon) is not violated. In other words, if firearms were banned outright for personal ownership, but you still…

It’s in the same sense that we have the right to free travel, but not the right to a car: the founder’s didn’t know what a car was, or that we’d have technology more advanced than horses, river boats, etc. That being said, we are freely allowed to use cars...provided we can prove that we are responsible enough to do…

For one brief moment, I saw that headline as Steven Spielberg. That would have been a shock to my day.

It really is, but the key point it has there is the right to bear arms: arms is a very broad term, and does not specifically mean firearms. It could be clubs, or knives, or pikes: in fact, many state militias spent their early years issuing pikes to their militiamen, because they were cheap. Part of the purpose of the…

There has been a lot of good comments regarding the interplay between domestic violence and the presence of firearms, so I don’t have much to add. I do have something I wish to share with folks arguing with gun-rights extremists, however: it usually leaves them blustering.