Lewis and Clark, Columbine High School, and chasing the Taliban with a Glock

I remember a time not so long ago when we saw the images of high school students trying to escape from Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado, which had been commandeered by a couple of teenage punks named Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold who, despite their age and the toughest Federal gun-control laws in our nation's history, still managed to storm the school with guns and bombs.

In 1986, full-auto weapons were banned. In 1993, the Brady Bill gave us background checks and (for a while) mandatory waiting periods for many gun purchases. In 1994, semi-auto weapons were banned along with any gun magazine that held more than 10 rounds. And in 1999, Columbine happened anyway.

Many of you remember ChickMagic from her many posts on DU over the years. Despite the fact that she believed the Second Amendment guaranteed the right to own only muskets and I had evolved into a staunch gun-rights advocate, Ginny married me in 2000. Sure, we had some rather involved discussions over concealed-carry permits, semi-automatics, Columbine, and all the rest, but we always tried to keep it civil because we loved each other. Ginny didn't want a gun in the house, but she did consent to an antique 12-gauge shotgun that had been in our family for four generations. It's strictly a wallhanger - if I tried to fire it, the barrel might kick open or split open or both. The gun had earned its retirement.

Over the years, Ginny softened her stance on gun control a little bit. And I softened my positions a little bit, too. Whereas I would have once enthusiastically supported guns on college campuses - I've known people who were attacked on campus - I can understand the logistics of dealing with so many raging hormones fueled by alcohol in this particular environment.

Just a few months before her death, Ginny did something that surprised me. Her nephew, who had been in the Marine Corps for a while, was facing the real possibility of being deployed to Afghanistan. That's when ChickMagic dragged me back to the gun range and told me she wanted to practice with a Glock 19. She told me in a dead-serious voice that if the Taliban hurt her nephew in any way, she was going to fly to Afghanistan herself and settle the score with the Taliban personally. She wanted to be ready.

Her fingers had the strength to fire the gun, but not to load the magazine, so I dutifully pushed the rounds into the magazine, jammed it into the well of the Glock, and handed it to Ginny so she could go destroying paper targets, imagining each one to be a Taliban thug.

Ginny always remained unmoved on semi-automatics, however. She did fire an AR-15 at the same gun range while I practiced with a rented MAK-90, but she made it plain she didn't want a Kalashnikov in the house - or a Stoner rifle, for that matter. That stemmed partially from her position on what guns actually existed when the Second Amendment was ratified. Who in their right mind would need a rifle magazine that held more than 10 rounds?

When the Lewis and Clark Expedition set out across the wilderness in 1804, the explorers took with them a Girandoni Air Rifle, an experimental rifle design that was years ahead of its time. Don't let the term "air rifle" fool you. The Girandoni used compressed air, but a hell of a lot of it - the air reservoir required 1,500 strokes from a hand pump, but the reservoir could take the pressure, and the gun produced deadly muzzle velocity in return. In addition, the rifle came complete with a semi-automatic mechanism and a gravity-fed tubular magazine that held 20 rounds of ammunition.

This tells me that the Founding Fathers who ratified the Second Amendment not only knew about semi-automatic rifles with "high-capacity" magazines - they approved of them. The first Girandoni was manufactured around 1779.

Naturally, I am fully aware that all of these arguments and recollections won't bring back a single soul who was cut down at Columbine in 1999 - or at the Cinemark at Aurora 14 years later. But then again, neither will any gun-control legislation you may want to see enacted.

We still have 12 people to mourn, 12 families to comfort. Can we do things differently moving forward? Perhaps. I want to get to the bottom of the matter with Holmes. I want to see if there were any red flags that could have prevented him from obtaining those weapons. But most of all, I want to see Democrats retake the House and solidify control of the Senate. And that means rethinking the whole traditional paradigm on gun control in America.

Democrats are the party that supports the Constitution, not the party that runs roughshod over it. And I've tried to encourage my fellow gun-owning Democrats to speak up ever since 2005, and I see no reason to let up on my efforts now.

Ginny may not approve of some of my ideas or the Kalashnikov that I now own - but wherever she is today, I hope she understands.