Why Not Repeal the 2nd Amendment Now?

AL dot com

On all gun safety issues the "second amendment" people refuse to give an inch while the gun safety people try to get minor concessions. Wrong question. The question that should be asked is: Should we repeal the Second Amendment? Not a single candidate or current office holder is asking this question, so I will.

The Second Amendment was added to the Constitution in 1791, 222 years ago. At that time, the arms people had the right to bear were either a flintlock musket or a flintlock pistol that took forever to re-load. Today an "arm" can be a 100 shot semi-automatic rifle that can reload in seconds with kits available to convert it into a machine gun.

Why not repeal this outmoded amendment now? We can replace it with an amendment that makes sense in the twenty-first century. We don't have to ban guns, just set sane regulations, without the confused wording of the Second Amendment. Repealing an amendment isn't easy but we repealed the eighteenth amendment.

What makes perfect sense to me is this: The 2nd Amendment was enacted when the "people had the right to bear either a flintlock musket or a flintlock pistol that took forever to re-load. Today an "arm" can be a 100 shot semi-automatic rifle"

I challenge any pro-gun advocate to argue against that logic without referring to the 1st Amendment.

Is It Necessary to Repeal the 2nd Amendment?

BDN Opinion by Robert Klose

Not long ago, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the so-called “right to bear arms” amendment to the Constitution is in fact a guarantee of the individual’s right to arm himself. My first reaction to this ruling was that the justices shared a common malady: the inability to read and interpret dependent clauses; in this case, the first part of the Second Amendment, which reads, “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State.”

How on Earth the leap was ever made from a collective right — the militia — to an individual’s right — the culprit in the recent grade school shooting in Connecticut — is, at first blush, mystifying. But when one considers that domestic policy regarding firearms is directed by the National Rifle Association, rather than Congress, everything becomes clear: The ghost of the late, addled Charlton Heston, aka Moses, is running the show.

School shootings having become almost as reminiscent of America as apple pie, and considering the inability of the citizenry — and the justices — to understand the meaning of the Second Amendment, the time has come to directly address the source of the controversy.

Why be coy? The Second Amendment should be repealed. Once it is gone, meaningful firearms legislation will finally be possible — converting gun possession from a right to a privilege, like a drivers license — and the NRA will be relegated to background noise, a hysterical mob with no constitutional basis for its oblique philosophy that the more firearms the better.

For an insight into what the Second Amendment really intended, it is instructive to refer to the Constitution’s predecessor — the short-lived Articles of Confederation. Take a look at the sixth amendment of that document, which, in part, reads:

“Every state shall always keep up a well-regulated and disciplined militia, sufficiently armed and accoutered, and shall provide and constantly have ready for use, in public stores … a proper quantity of arms, ammunition, and camp equipage.”

Mr. Klose is not alone in the way he interprets the 2nd Amendment. Many constitutional scholars as well as the ACLU agree. But my question is wouldn't it be possible to simply clarify the true and proper interpretation of the Amendment?  For me, that would mean relegating it to the scrap heap of irrelevance long with the 3rd. It is obviously obsolete and anachronistic, meaningless to modern times.

What happened over the last five or six decades is the bastardization of the 2nd Amendment. Is it actually necessary to repeal it in order to overcome this movement?

What's your opinion?  Please leave a comment.