Just a few days after the Seventh U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that we all have a right to carry loaded weapons when we venture to the grocery store because the Second Amendment so mandates, we witness this latest wild rampage in Connecticut. And the many loonies among us will likely argue that this last installment of the dumb and dumber version of America we seem to be living through is just why we need the Second Amendment: So we can defend ourselves by shooting back and stopping other loonies!

I left the country where I grew up and was originally trained as a lawyer at a time when people disappeared without courts raising any objection. I feel exactly the same frustration today in this country that I love and where my kids and grandkids were all born.

For the past 27 years I have been a member of the Florida Bar, and I’ve repeatedly claimed that our legal system is the best ever conceived by mankind. But if that legal system, ever more expensive and inaccessible to other than the wealthy, is incapable of putting a stop to this carnage simply because an absurdly influential lobby of gun sellers has collected pledges from our “representatives” promising not to mess with the presumed sanctity of the text of a constitutional amendment adopted 221 years ago, then it is meaningless to be a lawyer any more.

José Manuel Pallí, Coral Gables