Need for Well Regulated Civilian Militia vs Public Health

The Second Amendment reads: "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."



From The Huffington Post
But just when you think he can't go any lower, President Bush always finds a way to outdo himself. Today, in the wake of the incomprehensible slaughter of thirty-three students at Virginia Tech, the president sent out his spokeswoman to - first and foremost - defend the killer.

"The president believes that there is a right for people to bear arms," said Perino, in the first White House response, adding the utterly meaningless "but that all laws must be followed," thus nipping in the bud any crazy attempt to use this incident to have a discussion about gun rights in the United States.

Well, thank Heavens someone's looking out for the Second Amendment while everyone else is losing their heads.

Another comment by a politician today:

Senator John McCain said today "We have to look at what happened here, but it doesn't change my views on the Second Amendment, except to make sure that these kinds of weapons don't fall into the hands of bad people," "I do believe in the constitutional right that everyone has, in the Second Amendment to the Constitution, to carry a weapon...Obviously we have to keep guns in the hands of law-abiding citizens."

A physician ethicist wrote the following today on a bioethics listserv:
"59 millions adults in the US own a gun. 49 million households have a gun. 700,000 violent gun crimes in the US each year. Impulse killing is by far the greatest cause of gun deaths. There are 4 articles on medical ethics and guns in the last couple decades; face transplants is much more important than the proliferation of tools to blow away a face or a lovely student."

So what does this mean? Are guns and the known consequences of their use literally a public health and ethical issue and should measures be taken to change the habits of the U.S. public away from guns just as smoking habits are being changed by society's public health concerns over the primary and secondary effect of smoking?

By the way, do we still have or need a well regulated civilian militia as suggested in the Constitution? Are we still fighting the British?
..Maurice.