Leaders of the National Rifle Association said Sunday that they would fight any new gun restrictions introduced in Congress, and they made clear that they were not interested in working with President Obama to help develop a broad response to the Connecticut school massacre.

During an appearance on the NBC News program “Meet the Press,” Wayne LaPierre, the vice president of the powerful gun lobby, was openly dismissive of a task force established by Mr. Obama and led by Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. that is examining ways to reduce gun violence.

One reason that LaPierre is so dismissive of the task force is likely that its stated goal is to reduce gun violence, while his entire career is built on expanding gun violence [Yeah, yeah, go ahead and write nasty messages to me about this]. Of course, that’s not what he’ll say; instead, he casts the task force as an assault on the 2nd Amendment:

“If it’s a panel that’s just going to be made up of a bunch of people that, for the last 20 years, have been trying to destroy the Second Amendment, I’m not interested in sitting on that panel,” Mr. LaPierre said, adding that the “N.R.A. is not going to let people lose the Second Amendment in this country, which is supported by the overwhelming majority of the American people.”

But, as for me, I don’t have any problem with people owning guns or with the 2nd Amendment. In fact, I’d like to see the 2nd Amendment taken far more seriously than LaPierre does. All he cares about is that people go out and buy lots of guns; he doesn’t care one iota about the 2nd Amendment beyond his perception that it keeps him in a job. Personally I think it’s well past time that we worked on regulating the militia demanded by the 2nd Amendment: If you want to own a gun, then you also need to be a member of a well regulated militia. You need to be out there on the weekends, drilling with your compatriots. Every weekend. For hours and hours. Not the occasional trip to the gun club for fun. Not taking apart and cleaning your rifle when you feel like it. All the time. With someone watching over you and giving you directions. And it all needs to be regulated. Not just a little either. Well regulated.

That’s the only way to secure a free state, after all.