First Joe Biden can’t identify the article in the Constitution that authorizes the executive branch during a debate with Sarah Palin, and now Nancy Pelosi can’t identify which amendment recognizes the right to bear arms.  It’s bad enough that elected officials can’t properly identify the components of the foundational legal document of the United States when debating issues in public — but these two are party leaders.  One wants to run for President in three years, and another wants to become Speaker of the House again in two years.   Is it too much to ask that they study the Constitution a little bit first?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=zYk9gSH92mM

“We avow the First Amendment. We stand with that and say that people have a right to have a gun to protect themselves in their homes, in their jobs, where ever… in their workplace. For recreation, for hunting and the rest. So we’re not questioning that they do that,” Pelosi inarticulately told Wallace.

This isn’t just some esoteric reference, such as the 25th Amendment process for presidential disability and succession, or the 22nd Amendment limiting presidential terms.  The gun rights/gun control debate is almost always framed as “a Second Amendment rights” issue.  It sounds positively ignorant for anyone debating the issue of gun control; it’s a little frightening that Pelosi can’t correctly identify it in a news interview while demanding limitations on “assault weapons,” which she doesn’t bother to define.  Her colleagues in this debate have had that problem all along in attempting to distinguish between semi-automatic rifles that do the exact same thing — fire one bullet at a time — while looking more or less scary on the surface.

Maybe lawmakers should familiarize themselves with the fundamental facts before attempting to legislate for the rest of us