To the Journal editor:

This observation is shared in light of the recent school shooting in Oxford and the inevitable invocation of gun rights via the Second Constitutional Amendment by those who doggedly refuse to ponder any limitations on public access to personal weaponry.

The right embodied in that law was conceived and understood within the context of a rather primitive firearm which had to be loaded, ball by ball, after each discharge. It required separate insertions of powder and ball only after which process the projectile could be fired at a target.

The entire process could take as long as half a minute, when done by a skilled and practiced shooter! Even longer when attempted under stressful circumstances by an “average” shooter.

Furthermore, we’re told by firearms experts that once released, the ball was just as likely to miss its target as to hit it!

Fast forward 200-plus years and that right, borne of colonial mentality and basic mechanics now “guarantees” the likes of the Oxford shooter and his parents to posses and use an easily concealed, state-of-the-art handgun capable of automatically, with one pull of the trigger, discharging a reign of bullets in seconds in what would have taken up to 7-8 minutes to release 200-plus years ago.

Ask yourself, what’s wrong with this picture?