REPEAL THE SECOND AMENDMENT? GOOD LUCK!
Jim Greenfield
Anti-gun leftists have argued for decades that the words in the second amendment mean the opposite of what they say, i.e. that “the right of the people to keep and bear Arms shall not be infringed,” really means that “the right of the people to keep and bear Arms can be infringed.” But alas, in the aftermath of the Las Vegas massacre, the anti-gunners have abandoned their Orwellian effort to torture the meaning of the Constitutional language into its opposite. They have replaced the absurd incongruity of misinterpreting the plain meaning of the words, with a direct frontal assault on the second amendment itself; a call for repeal. (See Bret Stephens, “Repeal the Second Amendment,” New York Times, Oct. 5, 2017). The anti-gun faction’s call for repeal is a tacit admission that their previous arguments were specious and the second amendment actually means what it says.
In response to this attack on our most important Constitutional right, I say, in the immortal words of Clint Eastwood, “Go ahead. Make my day!” (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Flt9K8vlJGE)
Repealing the second amendment would require a two thirds “yes” vote in both Houses of Congress. This is unlikely unless Democrats not only attain an unprecedented 2/3 majority in both Houses, but have the cohesion and balls to enact the repeal. Even if Congress, for the first time in history, voted to repeal part of the Bill of Rights, it would still need to get over an even higher hurdle and be ratified by 38 out of 50 state legislatures. Thirty-nine percent of American households report owning guns. (Benzinga.com). Since many gun-owners prefer to keep their ownership of firearms private, the actual percentage is probably much higher. Given these numbers, how likely are anti-second amendment activists to succeed in getting repeal through Congress and 3/4 of the state legislatures? If they get the legislatures in liberal states like California, Massachusetts, and Hawaii, they’ll still have another 35 states to go. Good luck.
But repealing the second amendment is not the anti-gun faction’s real goal. It’s not enough to get rid of the words in the Constitution; they want to get rid of the actual guns. So once repeal is accomplished (in maybe about 50 years) they’ll go to phase two. This will require a totalitarian government to send out armed federal marshals to search every home in the nation and collect guns from people who may still cling to the obsolete notion that they have a right to bear arms. What could go wrong? It’s ironic that pacifist-minded liberals who abhor guns will have to rely on armed agents to implement their ideals. If a civil war erupts between gun-loathing liberals, and gun-toting conservatives, guess who wins.
Which is why I encourage gun haters to march ahead. While you’re wasting your resources on this Quixotic and inevitably futile quest to abolish a fundamental Constitutional right, those of us who love liberty can work on restoring other Constitutional rights that governmentalists and the ever-expanding mega state have already taken from us. Wouldn’t it be great if we could get back our 4th amendment right to be free of unreasonable searches and seizures, and our fifth amendment right to not be deprived of property without due process of law ? Then the police and federal agents would no longer be allowed to exercise “civil forfeiture” and seize the assets of people who haven’t been convicted of a crime, and the IRS would no longer be able to seize our cash, bank accounts, cars, home, and other property without bothering to holding a court hearing to prove we actually owe taxes. Or maybe we could get back our 6th and 7th amendment rights to a jury trial, even in so-called “administrative proceedings,” traffic cases, and tax court. These are proceedings in which the government now tells us not to believe what the Constitution says – we only have a Constitutional right to a jury trial if the government says we do.
Or is it possible we could even get back (dare I say it?) our tenth amendment right to not have the federal government usurp unlimited power without Constitutional authority? The tenth amendment, which places strict limits on federal power, was never repealed. Rather, as Judge Robert Bork put it, it’s a “dead letter,” i.e Congress, the Executive Branch, and the Courts simply pretend the tenth amendment doesn’t exist.
The left’s assault on the Constitution began years ago when they figured out that it limits government power and protects individual liberty, standing in the way of their dream of the infinite expansion of government bureaucracy. We knew the attack against Constitutional liberty was in full swing when leftist ideologues began harping on the fact that the founding fathers were all white men (itself a heinous offense to the lunatic fringe), and that some of them owned slaves. Younger generations of Americans are now taught to despise the men who founded this country, men who my generation was taught to venerate. The propaganda campaign against the founding fathers is a prelude to overthrowing what’s left of the liberties enshrined in the founding documents they created. The fact that despisers of liberty now feel so emboldened that they are explicitly calling for the repeal of part of the Bill of Rights does not bode well for the future of liberty, especially as millions of young people now emerge from college indoctrinated with the anti-Constitutional, anti-liberty, statist agenda of the far left.
I understand why going after the second amendment is central to the drive by lefty activists to overthrow the vestiges of our Constitutional system. It’s because the second amendment is the foundation for the protection of all our other rights. The founding fathers, white guys that they were, understood that the tendency of all governments is to amass ever greater power unto themselves, and the ultimate protection against tyranny is for the people to be armed. If these ideologues succeed in taking the second amendment down, the first amendment won’t be far behind. The edifice of liberty, already severely corroded, will collapse. And in the words of Sir Thomas Moore (also a white guy), “Do you think you will be able to stand in the wind that will blow then?”
Notwithstanding the Kumbaya mindset of the idealistic left, history has shown that people who are unarmed and defenseless, tend to wind up enslaved or slaughtered by armed oppressors. The bows and arrows of American Indians were no match for the rifles of the White invaders. Despots like Hitler and Stalin always begin their tyrannies by disarming the people. Slave-owners in the old South didn’t allow slaves to own guns. To do so would have been suicide.
I call on anti-gun advocates, whose liberal sensibilities may be offended by this argument, to conduct a thought experiment. Imagine that American slaves in the early 1800’s were trained and fully armed with guns and rifles. How long do you think slavery would have lasted? My guess; about five minutes.
But don’t take my word for the role that guns play in protecting liberty. I once heard an interview on NPR with Rosa Parks, the hero of the Civil Rights movement, and idol of the same people who now want to take our guns. Parks recounted an incident from her childhood when the Ku Klux Clan came to her house. Her grandfather stood on the front porch with a loaded shotgun. The KKK rode off, and didn’t come back.
Many of us gun owners feel that when they come to take your guns is the time to use them. The question you gun grabbers will then need to ask yourselves is this: “Do you feel lucky today? Well do ya, punk?”
Jim Greenfield’s podcast is at http://jimgreenfield.fireside.fm/
This is Jim Greenfield serving all humanity, but mainly serving myself.
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