Let me clarify something about my interpretation of the 2nd Amendment. When I say make its provisions absolute, what gets tossed back into my face is frequently, "So, you want American citizens to want mortars and nuclear weapons?"

No, I mean that nobody can be denied the right to keep and bear arms without due process of law--exactly what the constitution says. Without getting into procedural due process, we can note that substantive due process requires that any restriction must 1) fulfill a compelling state interest, 2) be narrowly tailored, and 3) utilize the least restrictive means to meet that compelling state interest.

Consider an "assault weapons ban." Such weapons (however they are defined, and nobody seems to know that, which is another problem) kill something on the order of 100 people per year out of 30,000 gun deaths, so the state interest can hardly be classified as compelling. Narrowly tailored is vague at best when nobody can define an "assault weapon" beyond something that looks scary. And an outright ban hardly qualifies as least restrictive.

Compare with my idea of a training and licensing program. This is the one approach that has reduced gun violence significantly when tried in the past, so I think that should satisfy "compelling interest," particularly since we already do something similar for CCLs. It is as narrowly defined as possible to achieve the objective. And requiring training is clearly far less restrictive than any sort of ban or cumbersome registration requirement. And it also avoids the "guilty until proved innocent" impact that is inherent--and violative of procedural due process--in enforcing any gun registration or red flag scheme.