| Submit your comments on this article | |
| -Short Attention Span Theater- | |
| Why It's Time to Repeal the Second Amendment | |
| 2016-06-20 | |
| [RollingStone] I teach the Constitution for a living. I revere the document when it is used to further social justice and make our country a more inclusive one. I admire the Founders for establishing a representative democracy that has survived for over two centuries. As much as we have a culture of reverence for the founding generation, it's important to understand that they got it wrong — and got it wrong often. Unfortunately, in many instances, they enshrined those faults in the Constitution. For instance, most people don't know it now, but under the original document, Mitt Romney would be serving as President Obama's vice president right now because he was the runner-up in the last presidential election. That part of the Constitution was fixed by the Twelfth Amendment, which set up the system we currently have of the president and vice president running for office together. Much more profoundly, the Framers and the Constitution were wildly wrong on race. They enshrined slavery into the Constitution in multiple ways, including taking the extreme step of prohibiting the Constitution from being amended to stop the slave trade in the country's first 20 years. They also blatantly wrote racism into the Constitution by counting slaves as only 3/5 of a person for purposes of Congressional representation. It took a bloody civil war to fix these constitutional flaws (and then another 150 years, and counting, to try to fix the societal consequences of them). There are others flaws that have been fixed (such as about voting and Presidential succession), and still other flaws that have not yet been fixed (such as about equal rights for women and land-based representation in the Senate), but the point is the same — there is absolutely nothing permanently sacrosanct about the Founders and the Constitution. They were deeply flawed people, it was and is a flawed document, and when we think about how to make our country a more perfect union, we must operate with those principles in mind. In the face of yet another mass shooting, now is the time to acknowledge a profound but obvious truth – the Second Amendment is wrong for this country and needs to be jettisoned. We can do that through a Constitutional amendment. It's been done before (when the Twenty-First Amendment repealed prohibition in the Eighteenth), and it must be done now. The Second Amendment needs to be repealed because it is outdated, a threat to liberty and a suicide pact. When the Second Amendment was adopted in 1791, there were no weapons remotely like the AR-15 assault rifle and many of the advances of modern weaponry were long from being invented or popularized. And yet, the basics remain the same: Propelling by fire a metallic projectile from a tube in order to poke a target. Sure, the Founders knew that the world evolved and that technology changed, but the weapons of today that are easily accessible are vastly different than anything that existed in 1791. When the Second Amendment was written, the Founders didn't have to weigh the risks of one man killing 49 and injuring 53 all by himself. Now we do, and the risk-benefit analysis of 1791 is flatly irrelevant to the risk-benefit analysis of today. Sez you.
But liberty is not a one way street. It also includes the liberty to enjoy a night out with friends, loving who you want to love, dancing how you want to dance, in a club that has historically provided a refuge from the hate and fear that surrounds you. It also includes the liberty to go to and send your kids to kindergarten and first grade so that they can begin to be infused with a love of learning. It includes the liberty to go to a movie, to your religious house of worship, to college, to work, to an abortion clinic, go to a hair salon, to a community center, to the supermarket, to go anywhere and feel that you are free to do to so without having to weigh the risk of being gunned down by someone wielding a weapon that can easily kill you and countless others. It also includes the Liberty to be able to secure those blessings from a growing and increasingly hostile government. The only way -- the only way -- to do that is to bear firearms. The liberty of some to own guns cannot take precedence over the liberty of everyone to live their lives free from the risk of being easily murdered. It has for too long, and we must now say no more. It does take precedence and it will continue to do so. Don't like it? Afraid of being shot? Get a gun! Finally, if we take the gun-rights lobby at their word, the Second Amendment is a suicide pact. As they say over and over, the only way to stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun. In other words, please the gun manufacturers by arming even the vast majority of Americans who do not own a gun. You lost me with that last sentence. Gun manufacturers don't drive gun sales. Fear of the further eroding of basic liberties does, such as proposing to repeal the 2nd Amendment. Using one or two amendments to destroy the others. That's what drives the fear that drives gun sales. Just think of what would have happened in the Orlando night-club Saturday night if there had been many others armed. In a crowded, dark, loud dance club, after the shooter began firing, imagine if others took out their guns and started firing back. Yes, maybe they would have killed the shooter, but how would anyone else have known what exactly was going on? How would it not have devolved into mass confusion and fear followed by a large-scale shootout without anyone knowing who was the good guy with a gun, who was the bad guy with a gun, and who was just caught in the middle? The death toll could have been much higher if more people were armed. It would have been a mess to be sure, but it is a mess now with unarmed people. The bad luck of the victims of the nightclub was that they were shot by a government agent who had training in firearms, and who had jumped through all the legally required hoops to obtain a firearm. How this redounds to me and other private citizens who keep and bear their arms without shooting innocents can't be explained because it is a construct without any logic. The gun-rights lobby's mantra that more people need guns will lead to an obvious result — more people will be killed. We'd be walking down a road in which blood baths are a common occurrence, all because the Second Amendment allows them to be. No question that more guns in the hands of more people will lead to more shootings. But there is also no question that more bloodbaths are coming for reasons that have zero to do with the number of firearms available. In case you haven't noticed, there is a war going on which pit people who want to be left alone against people who want to pit their very government against them, all for no other reason than political payback. Those who want to be left alone need and should have firearms and all the ammunition they can possibly acquire. The other side, in which this "Constitutional Professor" resides, needs government to disarm those people, all for the purposes of political payback for being conservative, or whatever intellectual construct that "empowers" them to set a government against fellow citizens. At this point, bickering about the niceties of textual interpretation, whether the history of the amendment supports this view or that, and how legislators can solve this problem within the confines of the constitution is useless drivel that will lead to more of the same. We need a mass movement of those who are fed up with the long-dead Founders' view of the world ruling current day politics. A mass movement of those who will stand up and say that our founding document was wrong and needs to be changed. A mass movement of those who will thumb their nose at the NRA, an organization that is nothing more than the political wing of the country's gun manufacturers, and say enough is enough. Good luck with amassing a political movement that can never be more than something funded by those who love government and those who hate people who just want to be left to their very lives. The Second Amendment must be repealed, and it is the essence of American democracy to say so. And gun owners, those who own ARs and AKs and .308s, will get the final say-so. | |
| Posted by:badanov |
| #22 I would bet that even with CCW holders firing and possibly hitting bystanders, the total body count would have been far less than what there was without them. |
| Posted by: DarthVader 2016-06-20 22:59 |
| #21 No need to assume. Statistical data shows CCW holders fire less, hit more and more often kill their targets then police officers. They also hit less innocent bystanders. |
| Posted by: Silentbrick 2016-06-20 20:05 |
| #20 You're assuming, then, that the average CCW individual can effectively return fire in a packed public venue? |
| Posted by: Pappy 2016-06-20 19:43 |
| #19 There were off duty armed cops AT the gun free zone night club. How well did THAT combination workout. |
| Posted by: Unelet Protector of the Sith2424 2016-06-20 19:31 |
| #18 OK, everybody calm down. It's the Rolling Stone and nobody takes it seriously. There is a legal mechanism for changing the Constitution if this twerp thinks he can exercise it. But he won't. |
| Posted by: Ebbang Uluque6305 2016-06-20 13:01 |
| #17 In 1776 the history of the world up to that time was dominated by evil institutions and individuals and a subservient populace unable to defend itself from their depredations. Although our governments have hardly been the quintessence of good, we remain a free people because we are armed and dangerous to those would enslave us. |
| Posted by: Ulusoque Speaking for Boskone3139 2016-06-20 12:45 |
| #16 To them Government is God, so Rights are Government-given, and can be Government-taken. |
| Posted by: Glenmore 2016-06-20 11:55 |
| #15 The real argument that these fascists have is that rights can't be God given as there is no God. In my studies many years ago I read a definitive repudiation of this argument vis a vis natural rights but I can't recall the author. I like to phrase it that all of your rights exist even if you are all alone on an island. You have no rights to anything of anyone else be it material or labor. |
| Posted by: AlanC 2016-06-20 11:42 |
| #14 What I find amusing is that these "Constitutional scholars" overlook that the language is mostly negative. That's because the Constitution does not grant any 'rights'. It simply acknowledges that the rights exist naturally (or are granted by God) and cannot be taken away. You can attempt to prevent those rights from being exercised (like the Gun-grabbers are now attempting to do) or restrict the exercise of those rights (Felons, etc...) but you cannot remove them. Something any Constitutional Scholar should know. |
| Posted by: CrazyFool 2016-06-20 11:01 |
| #13 The editorialist, who teaches at Drexel University's law school (now on its third name), writes frequently for the Rolling Stone on legal issues. Rolling Stone, like most of the legacy media, does not have the sales numbers it once did. In similar straits, Drexel's law school only opened for business in 2006, and its ranking and the caliber of its students reflects that. |
| Posted by: trailing wife 2016-06-20 10:44 |
| #12 Our rights are granted by God. The Constitution lays down the laws that protect our rights from infringement by a grasping, power-mad government. The Second Amendment guarantees that we have the tools to protect all our other rights. Remember: while not all gun-grabbers are fascists, all fascists are gun-grabbers. |
| Posted by: regular joe 2016-06-20 09:24 |
| #11 Darth -don't go there. |
| Posted by: DarthVader 2016-06-20 09:05 |
| #10 What I find amusing is that these "Constitutional scholars" overlook that the language is mostly negative. That the government will not do this or that Congress shall not do that. Must be inconvenient for these nanny-staters. |
| Posted by: AlmostAnonymous5839 2016-06-20 08:55 |
| #9 I revere the document when it is used to further social justice Ah, but otherwise it sucks, right? #5 This person is so tone deaf I don't know how he's employed. Actually, that is how he's employed. |
| Posted by: charger 2016-06-20 08:51 |
| #8 Ditto Glenmore. And the slave states pushed hard for counting the slaves as full people. It was a compromise that allowed the convention to go forward. This is a loser who is a fascist that wants to dictate his beliefs to everyone else. |
| Posted by: AlanC 2016-06-20 08:37 |
| #7 As someone who teaches the Constitution for a living, he must not be very good - he implies the 3/5ths compromise was bad because it counted slaves as only 3/5ths of a person for representation, but to have counted them as whole persons would have increased the Congressional strength of the slave states. |
| Posted by: Glenmore 2016-06-20 07:58 |
#6 ...the essence of American democracy... There's the problem. We're not a democracy, we're a republic. Our rights are not subject to the whims of popular sentiment. |
| Posted by: Rob Crawford 2016-06-20 07:16 |
| #5 This person is so tone deaf I don't know how he's employed. |
| Posted by: Charles 2016-06-20 07:07 |
| #4 Because Americans have all these guns but not actually using them to defend their liberties? :-) |
| Posted by: g(r)omgoru 2016-06-20 06:24 |
| #3 I teach the Constitution for a living. I could stop reading right there. Thanks. |
| Posted by: Skidmark 2016-06-20 04:47 |
| #2 I think you should quit your job. The Constitution does not give you YOUR rights, They are GOD Given. No one can take these Rights, that is the point. |
| Posted by: newc 2016-06-20 02:24 |
| #1 Sorry. Not happening. You punks tried to repeal the first amendment last year. No one listened to you then either. |
| Posted by: rammer 2016-06-20 01:12 |