When it comes to the Second Amendment, you’d think the text would be plain enough. For all the legalese we see in laws today, the Bill of Rights amendments are pretty straight-forward.

If I could go back in time and help influence the writing of it, about the only thing I’d change is the phrase “A well-regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state,” only because I could tell them that future generations would use that as justification to ignore the rest. I understand the meaning well enough, but others don’t.

And when it comes to the meaning of the Second Amendment, you can never trust an anti-gunner’s take what is and isn’t an assault on the Second Amendment.

For example, this past week, the Chicago Sun-Times ran an opinion piece where I came across a claim from the paper about the Second Amendment. The context is within something called 31 bullets, which are a bunch of bullet point of items they want to see enacted in some way.

That’s when I came across this particular tidbit:

With “31 bullets” we have tried to arm young people, and all our readers, with hard facts and a practical agenda. And we have done so, we want to stress, firmly within the strictures of the Second Amendment, always seeking common ground in the moderate middle. There is no threat to the rights of a gun owners, that is to say, in calling for the inclusion of a trigger lock whenever a gun is sold, as we do in Bullet 2. It is not an assault on the Second Amendment to call for an age restriction of 21 for anybody who wants to buy a military-style weapon of mass death, such as an AR-15 rifle, as we do in Bullet 21.

Let’s break some of this down a bit.

There is no threat to the rights of a gun owners, that is to say, in calling for the inclusion of a trigger lock whenever a gun is sold, as we do in Bullet 2.

Except that every new gun I’ve ever purchased has already come with a gun lock as it stands. All of those run through the action of the weapon, making it impossible to use until it’s unlocked.

I’m sure the folks in Chicago would agree that such a lock should be just as good as a trigger lock, right?

But the problem, and why this is a threat to the rights of gun owners, is that it such a thing would necessitate an end to private sales of firearms. I’d have to go through an FFL holder so that someone licensed could make sure that a lock was provided on a used firearm. It would also drive up the costs for used firearms, many of which no longer have locking devices. Dealers would have to provide those devices at their expense, which would then be passed on to consumers.

Since used firearms are the primary source of quality guns for low-income individuals, this will negatively impact the poor who often find themselves forced to live in bad neighborhoods.

So yeah, it’s a threat.

Now the next bit:

It is not an assault on the Second Amendment to call for an age restriction of 21 for anybody who wants to buy a military-style weapon of mass death, such as an AR-15 rifle, as we do in Bullet 21.

Of course it’s an assault on the Second Amendment. Only a brain-dead wad of chewing gum could really believe it’s not.

Age restrictions mean lawful and law-abiding adults are barred from purchasing a firearm that is available to anyone else. This is discriminatory, and the inflammatory language betrayed the bias about these guns in the first place.

Look, we’re talking about legal adults. They can vote, sign contracts, enlist in the military, and a whole host of other things. They can do these things because we have decided they’re adults. That’s the age we’ve set in stone as the limit. This is when their rights essentially kick in.

Yet now, we have people trying to say that they don’t really get all their rights upon reaching adulthood. While we limit the drinking age–something that’s a topic for another day and another place–we don’t limit their right to vote, to travel freely, or much of anything else. What they’re calling for is the limiting of a constitutionally protected right simply because of someone’s age.

How is that not an assault on the Second Amendment? Pushing someone’s Second Amendment rights away because of their age is beyond ridiculous.

But at the end of the day, that’s what anti-gunners do. They take the idea of your rights, assault them at every turn, then pretend that no such assault actually occurred. It’s why you can never trust their interpretation of the Second Amendment.

Ever.