It’s a difficult story to reconcile with today’s op-ed in The Dallas Morning News, in which Texas Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison argues that our forefathers’ decision to specifically address gun ownership in the Bill of Rights suggests that Jefferson and friends used the word “militia” in reference to individual rights rather than to the rights of the army.

If the Second Amendment simply read, “The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed,” you’d have no problem convincing me that our forefathers were adamantly supportive of the individual right of all Americans to own guns. But because they explicitly chose to include the “militia” bit (bearing in mind that “militia” does, in fact, mean “army”) I remain convinced that this country’s founders never meant for the Second Amendment to advocate for individual citizens’ inalienable right to unchecked, unrestricted gun ownership.

Were Jefferson around today, I’d love to ask him whether he ever intended for the Second Amendment to take absolute priority over the amendment that precedes it – the one that guarantees us the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Emphasis on “life.”