Appearing in his role as regular panel member on Friday's Inside Washington on PBS, Politico's Evan Thomas -- formerly of Newsweek -- made known his view that the Second Amendment was meant to be "limited to muskets," but went on to undermine the talk of more gun laws as a "side show" as he asserted that "it's a diversion from what we really need to do, which is deal with bigger issues like debt and climate and things that politicians don't want to deal with."
At one point during the discussion of gun control, liberal columnist Mark Shields suggested taxing bullets to make them more expensive like the governnent did with cigarettes:
It wasn't just simply the culture and the glamour. They put a cost on it. We ought to put a cost on ammunition. We ought to put a tax on that. Cop-killer bullets ought to be prohibitively expensive.
Host Gordon Peterson read the text of the Second Amendment and queried:
Does that speak to the right of security of the nation through a well-regulated defense establishment? Or is it a green light for some guy in Upstate New York to outfit his garage like an armory?
Thomas responded:
I think it was limited to muskets myself, but the Supreme Court differs on this. They have basically upheld the Second Amendment. It does offer real protection to gun owners. And it makes this somewhat of a moot issue. I think this is mostly for show right now.
And I think it's a diversion -- I'm all for gun control, but I don't think it's going to happen -- it's a diversion from what we really need to do, which is deal with bigger issues like debt and climate and things that politicians don't want to deal with. It's a side show.
