When the 2nd Amendment was written, the United States was still very young. We were worried about Britain trying to invade us again, which they did in 1812, and slave owners were terrified that they could be unarmed against a slave revolt. We didn’t have a standing professional army, the Whiskey Rebellion had just been put down, and some colonies were still fighting Native American tribes and the territory they had encroached on.

Whether you agree with it or not, the 2nd Amendment made sense in the time it was written. Our fledgling democracy needed every white male with a gun, just in case the slaves rebelled, or the British came back.

Times have changed. The issue of slavery was settled with the Civil War, and the last major invasion of the United States was repelled in New Orleans by Andrew Jackson. Since then, we’ve replaced muskets with assault rifles, and replaced state militias with the National Guard, local and state police forces, and the most powerful military the world has ever known.

The 2nd Amendment was designed to protect an experiment in representative democracy against Britain, a world empire run by a mad monarch. That threat no longer exists, and neither does the need for the 2nd Amendment.







This is why we need to repeal and replace a portion of the Bill of Rights which was rightly explained by the late Antonin Scalia in the Supreme Court’s Heller v. DC decision where he argued that the 2nd Amendment was not a limitless right.

“There seems to us no doubt, on the basis of both text and history, that the Second Amendment conferred an individual right to keep and bear arms. Of course the right was not unlimited, just as the First Amendment’s right of free speech was not, see, e.g., United States v. Williams, 553 U. S. ___ (2008). Thus, we do not read the Second Amendment to protect the right of citizens to carry arms for any sort of confrontation, just as we do not read the First Amendment to protect the right of citizens to speak for any purpose. Before turning to limitations upon the individual right, however, we must determine whether the prefatory clause of the Second Amendment comports with our interpretation of the operative clause.” (Source)

We have repealed an amendment before. Prohibition of alcohol failed miserably. We have added amendments to ban slavery under the 13th amendment, allow equal rights for all citizens under the 14th, and allowed women the right to vote.

Now it is time for us to update the 2nd Amendment to allow all law-abiding Americans the right to keep and bear arms, within reason. We need to understand that gun violence is a serious issue, because the people who are able to buy military-grade weapons are not well-regulated.

The NRA is taking foreign money to prop up the gun lobby and the insane rhetoric that tears our country apart. All of this needs to change, lest we all hang separately.

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