Talk is cheap, but persuading Americans to surrender their rights will be expensive, difficult, and time-consuming.
A few hours after yesterday’s shooting hit the news, the comedian Rob Delaney penned this tweet:
The @NRA & the politicians they own must not know this T. Jefferson quote. The 2nd Amendment is a FUCKING BOY’S COAT. pic.twitter.com/cKR0Nk4Uwm
— rob Delaney (@robdelaney) August 26, 2015
For ease of viewing, here is that Jefferson quotation in full (it’s adapted from a July 12, 1816, letter to Samuel Kercheval):
I am not an advocate for frequent changes in laws and constitutions, but laws and institutions must go hand in hand with the progress of the human mind. As that becomes more developed, more enlightened, as new discoveries are made, new truths discovered and manners and opinions change, with the change of circumstances, institutions must advance also to keep pace with the times. We might as well require a man to wear still the coat which fitted him when a boy as civilized society to remain ever under the regimen of their barbarous ancestors.
by Charles W. Cooke