Second Amendment T-shirt
by Tom Warin
Second Amendment T-shirt
(BustedTees)
http://www.bustedtees.com/secondamendment
There are few pieces of text in the world that have been as widely misinterpreted as the 2nd Amendment to the constitution of the United States of America.
There are a number of widely disparate readings of the extant text and of the intent of the original authors. I will briefly cover some of the alternatives here.
Some fringe groups believe that it guarantees the right of every citizen to own and carry a firearm. The image of the entire country as some kind of armed camp is so ridiculous that this interpretation can be dismissed out of hand.
A more respectable interpretation, illustrated in this 21st Century T-Shirt design based on a 20th century photograph of a 19th century drawing based on an 18th century written description, is that it protects man-bear hybrids from having their arms forcibly removed.
At the time the 2nd Amendment was written, man-bears were regularly hunted because of the mistaken belief that their arms made good back-scratchers.
Some believe that the text contains a simple spelling error and that the authors intended it to read: "the right to bare arms", which would have given constitutional protection to the controversial practice of wearing T-Shirts.
There are others who believe that the spelling is correct, but that the word order has shifted from the original intent. They read it as "the right to arm bears". They point to the fact that many households in Colonial America had trained bears to guard their valuables.
By the time they sobered up and realized the mistake, it was too late. If my years spent in an armed compound in Montana have taught me anything, it's that nothing regulates a militia better than a couple of rounds of beer.
If you like the T-shirt, check out the other crazy spoofs at BustedTees.
