I'll concede that I am not a big one for entitlement programs, but when you have a precedent reaching back to the times of the American Revolution, it might just be worth thinking about.

On Jan. 2, 1775, as historian David Hackett Fischer recounts in Paul Revere's Ride, the good people of Newton held a town meeting. The issues they discussed were similar in a certain sort of way to the issues that might be discussed today by the D.C. council. They included a proposed gun law and entitlement program.

In Newton, the gun law and entitlement program were one and the same.

The Newtonians thought it so important for every man in town to own a gun that they were ready to give him one if he could not afford it.

"Voted," say the town records, "that the Selectmen use their best discretion in providing fire-arms for the poor of the town who are unable to provide for themselves."

The District of Columbia argues that since there is no longer a colonial-style militia, the rest of the Second Amendment is meaningless -- hence it can ban the people from either keeping or bearing arms. Under that logic, the DC government could shut down the Washington Post because it no longer uses the sort of presses in vogue in the 1790s -- and there would be no First Amendment protection at all for television, radio, and the internet. But we can see what was important to those who fought for the independence of this country and later adopted our Constitution -- that each free citizen have the means of self-defense, and the assistance of the government in obtaining it if he could not.

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