PA Bill Number: SB170
Title: In criminal history record information, further providing for juvenile records; and, in juvenile matters, further providing for powers and duties of ...
Description: In criminal history record information, further providing for juvenile records; and, in juvenile matters, further providing for powers and dutie ...
Last Action: Removed from table
Last Action Date: Oct 2, 2024
Anti-Gunners: Let's repeal the Second Amendment :: 02/17/2018
Thirty thousand Americans die every year from gunshot wounds, whether from homicide, suicide, or accident. We have had several school shootings in the past several months, roughly one every sixty hours thus far in 2018. And our feckless leaders in the Senate and the House remain beholden to the National Rifle Association, a trade organization that has opposed any attempt to remedy the problem.
Michael Leroy Oberg(Photo: Provided)
While children die, they remind Americans that the Founding Fathers asserted in the Second Amendment that “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.”
No matter what arguments the advocates of gun control deploy — that the phrase “well regulated” implies some ability on the part of government to limit gun rights; that the verb construction to “bear arms” has been used almost always to describe a military use for weapons; that the Constitution is a “living” document that ought to be interpreted in the light of changing circumstances; and that the Founding Fathers could never have considered that the sort of violence acted out in Las Vegas or Orlando or Newtown a justifiable example of bearing arms — the advocates of “gun rights” will always have their tendentious reading of the Second Amendment to defend their position.
So let’s repeal the Second Amendment. It is dated, lethal, and morally abhorrent. The Constitution is not a sacred text. It is a framework for government, the product of dozens of compromises. The men who framed the document envisioned that it would be changed. They made the process difficult and time-consuming, but it has happened.
The Second Amendment emerged out of a context unique to a new nation. When it was ratified, America’s leaders relied upon the militia for local defense, to punish Indians, and control slaves, and in a nation separated from its imperial rivals by the Atlantic, the militias were barely adequate to that task. But the conditions from which the Second Amendment emerged obviously no longer apply.
Repealing the Second Amendment would deprive no one of their guns, but it would empower the Congress and state legislatures to do something effectively to end the slaughter. Some jurisdictions will act with a decision to limit magazines and increase background checks, and others will not. But let’s get rid of this antiquated and blood-drenched amendment, and let’s end the slaughter.
The NRA advocates an untrammeled right to keep and bear arms and asserts the constitutional right to do so. The Supreme Court has provided support. Meanwhile the slaughter continues. Let’s disarm the constitution, repeal that part of it that provides cover for the NRA. At our current pace, we will continue to bury too many victims of gun violence each month.
Michael Leroy Oberg is Distinguished Professor of History at SUNY-Geneseo
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