In the aftermath of the shooting of US Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, a federal judge, and many private citizens, an intense debate has broken out in the United States. People on the political left see the shooting as the result of angry, usually right wing rhetoric about “second amendment” solutions to the Democratic Party/Barack HUSSEIN Obama socialist takeover of the United States. Right wingers have reacted with anger against this critique, relying, as they usually do when someone who appears to be at least tangentially related to right wing political ideological principles does something violent, on the theory that the person was “deeply disturbed” and that this attack “had nothing to do with politics.”

As it happens, on this one I am much more sympathetic to the “it was the act of a lone nut job” line than I am to the “it’s a symptom and result of our abusive political discourse” argument. I have trolled through some of the alleged shooter’s comments and postings, and there certainly are elements in them that mirror some conservative critiques of American politics. He indicated a loathing for government, for example, as well as anger about abuse of property rights and frustration with the international banking and monetary systems. These concerns have been at the center of numerous right wing attacks on mainstream American politics for 80 years.

However, many of his postings were actually, simply crazy. His ramblings on government were essentially incoherent: he used words common to right wing critiques of government, but didn’t really seem to understand the concepts underlying them. He wanted to use math to rationalize grammar. He believed—or at least posted—that government was using grammar to control us. As it happens, I’ve had a couple of students who I am pretty sure were off the deep end (none who did anything like this), so I have a sense of the kind of whack job his professors reported that he was. He was, it seems to me, severely psychologically damaged.

Notably, we have lots of evidence that there are some number of sick people out there who will act in accord with the demons in their head given some psychic break: shootings at Virginia Tech, and Northern Illinois, and Columbine and lots of other places show as much.

So the real question is: what, if anything, can society do to protect itself from such nut jobs? Assuming we don’t create a division of Homeland Security that runs around giving us all on-the-spot psych tests (could any of us pass?), what ought to be done?

I think I’ve hit on a solution that would both pass Constitutional muster and would significantly limit the damage crazy people could cause. The key is to limit gun ownership to single shot, muzzle-loading muskets and pistols.

Think about it. What, exactly, let the guy in Arizona (on Virginia, or Illinois, or Colorado, or lots of other places) do so much damage? Quick firing, semi-automatic weapons with multiple clips. That is, the guys were able to fire lots of bullets very quickly and then either reload rapidly and continue firing, or at least try to reload and keep killing.

The Second Amendment at least allegedly protects Americans’ rights of gun ownership. I’m not sure it actually does, but that fight seems lost. So let’s embrace both the amendment AND that wing of judicial conservatism called “originalism” in coming up with a solution to the problem of gun violence in America. Justices Scalia and Thomas insist that the Constitution can be interpreted only in the terms it was understood by the people who ratified it. Thus Scalia recently noted that the 14th amendment doesn’t make sex-based discrimination illegal since the people who passed the amendment didn’t think it did. It’s not “original intent.”

So let’s apply that logic. What kind of gun was it even possible for a private citizen to own when the 2nd amendment was ratified in 1791? That’s right: a single-shot, muzzle loading musket or pistol (which would have been very rare).

Hence the musket-only restriction meets original intent. Conservatives must, therefore, find it to be constitutional. As a bonus, it would make us all safer because muskets are hard to conceal, because they can only shoot once before reloading, and the slow process of reloading them would give bystanders a chance to subdue the shooter.

It’s a close to a perfect solution to the problem of crazy shooters of whatever motive we’re likely to get. We’re not going to do it, of course. But it would work.