Dear James Madison,
You had one job when you drafted the second amendment — one job! All you had to do was correctly predict (in the two and a half centuries since you put ink to parchment) that people would invent ridiculously more powerful guns and that politicians would have no ability or interest in thinking critically about what that means for our society. That’s all you had to do.
Let’s be real: you should have seen this coming by 1791. I’m sure there were reports of disgruntled kids losing their minds, stealing their father’s muskets, marching into one-room schoolhouses, and firing off approximately one round every four minutes. News outlets descending upon the towns where the most recent tragedy occurred, asking the farmers and blacksmiths about what would cause someone to do these heinous things to other people. Couldn’t you have tweaked the second amendment language to account for any of this? What kind of politician doesn’t do their due diligence for the betterment of the people for which they govern?
Did you even consult your colleagues while you were carelessly crafting the language that would lead to our demise? Or were you simply satisfied to get something written before heading out for one of your many recesses? You couldn’t come up with anything better than, “A well-regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the People to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed”? All you had to do was add, “By the way, I’m referring to muskets” at the end of it.
Sir, how dare you expect future politicians to have the moral courage and wherewithal to actually think for themselves and to change with the times? Why didn’t you anticipate that so many of them would be spineless, self-serving cowards?
Anyway, I just wanted to thank you for playing a key role in causing the destruction of the country you helped create, based on a simple lack of being able to correctly predict the future. Well done!
— Josh