Americans are being killed in the streets, killed in their houses of worship, killed in their schools, killed when they celebrate the Lunar new year. Killed in groceries because they are black. Killed in synagogues because they’re Jewish. Killed in schools because we let our children and the wonderful people who want to devote their lives to teaching them be murdered and do absolutely nothing. Change absolutely nothing.
A religious-like attachment to a flawed document from the 1700s renders us helpless, uttering platitudes that are even more meaningless than usual.
The Second Amendment must be repealed and replaced with something that works in the modern era.
First, let’s dismiss any strict constructionist argument. The founding fathers meant this or that, so it is inherently perfect. NO. The constitution is the most imperfect and racist of documents. How could it not be so, when it’s born out of the intersection of commerce, and the opposite poles of liberty and slavery? The constitution, just like the foundations of the early republic, was so deeply flawed we’ve made 27 amendments to it, including amendments that repeal amendments.
A document so deeply flawed due to slavery and the racist underpinning of human bondage in the US, that three major constitutional crises, and a number of minor ones, occurred in the first 70 years after its signing. The last crisis led to a civil war that killed the equivalent of 7 million killed today. To fix the constitution after that bloodbath required two amendments.
The 13th outlawed slavery except in cases of imprisonment. The passage of the 13th sets the backdrop for Daniel Day Lewis’s great role as Lincoln in the same-titled movie. Congress added the catchall 14th amendment about a year later – part rights guarantee and part get back at the southern elites. A classically vindictive winner move that I heartily agree with in this instance. The 14th includes the ringing bravado of article one, which prohibits state or federal officials from enacting a law which can “deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.”
Of course, 14th’s article one would be interpreted for the next hundred or so years to mean no white citizen can be deprived of liberty.
Enough about that. The second amendment must be repealed. First I want no militia’s roaming the streets. Second people wanted the amendment because they were worried about slave rebellions, poor farmers from the hill country coming into town with guns at the ready to complain about taxes, and being allowed to kick the remnants of the first inhabitants of this continent off their ancestral lands. Various laws/dictums by both the British and early state governments tried to control guns (a limited resource in a colonial America where manufacturing was held down by the Parliament’s policy). The people wanted none of that, hence this amendment.
The second amendment’s as necessary to modern life as amendment three which prohibits the government from housing soldiers in our homes.
I am not against gun ownership. I know many people who own them responsibly.
If someone wants a gun or guns for hunting, target shooting or protecting their home, fine. Kept in secure locations, I have nothing to say. However, when an adult keeps a loaded pistol in a location where their six-year-old can find it and use it to shoot a teacher (yes, this happened two weeks ago), that adult should go to jail.
As long as a weapon can’t be used or easily modified to be used as a weapon of mass killing and it has a legitimate hunting, target shooting or home protection use, fine. Let it be manufactured and sold.
To those second amendment folks who believe in the unlimited right to own a gun. There is no unlimited right to own things that kill others. Should people have the right to a bazooka? It’s hand held and kills quickly, just like an AK47.
Here is what I think the 28th amendment should say:
Article One: This amendment repeals article two of the US Constitution.
Article Two: Every citizen of the US has the right to gun ownership for personal protection or sport.
Article Three: Congress or a state government may regulate the sale, ownership or manufacture of weapons in the United States to ensure public protection.
Article Four: There is no right for private citizens to band together in armed groups, be they called militias, gangs or assemblages of clowns in costume.
Ok the last article was tongue in cheek, but only slightly.