The United States Constitution is in many ways an amazing document. It has allowed our country to become the envy of the world, but it was not and is not perfect. There have been amendments to correct some flaws and it is now time to fix a remaining flaw.
The Second Amendment needs to be repealed. Just take it out of the Constitution.
A well regulated Militia, being
necessary to the security of a free State,
the right of the people to keep and
bear Arms, shall not be infringed.
Repealing the second amendment doesn't mean all guns become illegal and will be confiscated. What it means is that the laws about guns must be legislated from the perspective of how we as a country want them to impact our society and not from the perspective of a constitutional right where we argue about what the founders actually meant. Gun ownership and use should not be some inalienable right. It should not be a foundational part of our country and enshrined in the Constitution. It's inclusion in the Constitution is one of the reasons we have such a terrible gun violence problem.
Most us drive cars and depend on cars to support our daily lives. But we also know that operating a car is not a right. We have to be licensed and provide insurance among other restrictions. There are rules for different types of vehicles and when and how they can be operated. Those rules are determined by legislation to fit our changing needs. For example, self-driving cars will require many new laws and regulations.
This is the way gun laws should be handled. Laws to define how guns can be used for self-defense, hunting, target shooting can be legislated just like laws that govern drivers, driving, cars, trucks, ATVs, motorcycles, etc., and without needing to quote the founding fathers or the Federalist Papers.
I believe the Second Amendment was written to provide the country with a service; citizen soldiers in militias to defend us from foreign threats which we no longer face. We now have well trained people in the military services, National Guard and Reserves that provide for our defense.
For the constitutional originalists/textualists, I don't see anything in the Second Amendment that provides guidance about personal self-defense or suggest that the amendment was meant to provide ready weapons for citizens to overthrow a misguided government. I also don't understand how the initial dependent clause can be ignored, although that is convenient since militias were male only institutions so the Second Amendment wouldn't apply to women.
And how well has the Second Amendment worked? Are we better off having it? How is our record on gun violence and the number of citizens killed by guns compared to the rest of the industrial world? We've been told for years that all we need is more good people with guns. Yet while gun purchases continue to sky rocket, gun violence increases and still more and more people are killed by guns. Clearly more and more guns are not making us safer or decreasing gun violence.
In my city we have an interstate highway where people are wary to drive for fear of being shot for an awkward lane change or just by a stray bullet. Kids are being killed in their homes from stray shots coming from outside their houses. Do we really want to live this way? And the situation keeps getting worse.
What does it say about us that guns are now the leading cause of childhood deaths? We should be ashamed. More importantly, we must do something about that.
Let's repeal the Second Amendment and start creating laws that allow reasonable ownership and use of guns.
