. . . home of the not-quite-brave-enough-to-overcome-your-paranoid-fantasies-without-hiding-behind-a-gun.

In case you hadn’t heard, the U.S. Supreme Court, in a 5-to-4 decision, ruled yesterday that the Second Amendment protects your right to keep a loaded handgun at home for self-defense, overturning the District of Columbia’s ban on handguns.

I’m not going to get into the parsing of the Second Amendment and what its various eighteenth-century commas mean or don’t mean—that ground has already been plowed (if you care about this and you’re not already familiar with the arguments, see Adam Freedman’s piece, “Clause and Effect,” from late last year). But I do think we need to ask the question of whether we Americans care more about human life (even if it’s just our own) or the right to be able to take life with one pull of a trigger. (My wife and I are expecting our first child in a few months; I’m not sure whether to hope it’s a boy or a girl or a Smith & Wesson M&P Compact .357 Sig.)

So I’ll admit it: if there’s a correct interpretation of the Second Amendment, I don’t care what it is as long as there are someday enough reasonable Supreme Court justices to overturn yesterday’s ruling. In that light, here’s one last thing to think about: as the New York Times editorial page put it today,

“This audaciously harmful decision, which hands the far right a victory it has sought for decades, is a powerful reminder of why voters need to have the Supreme Court firmly in mind when they vote for the president this fall.”

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