The 2nd Amendment should be repealed
By
Max J. Castro Read Spanish Version
majcastro@gmail.com
“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.”
Guns
kill people. They lower the threshold separating rage from homicide.
Absent a gun, a quarrel may result in a black eye and a few bruises.
Bring a gun into the picture and the result can be much more deadly.
Given
the multiple massacres of recent weeks — and now that the Supreme
Court has interpreted the Second Amendment to mean that there is an
individual right to bear arms — it’s time to pronounce this
heresy: The Second Amendment is an anachronism and should be
repealed.
That
is an assertion that will not come out of the mouth of any politician
of either party no matter the carnage inflicted by guns every day;
such is the power and ferocity of the National Rifle Association
(NRA) and its supporters across the nation. Most Americans would like
to see tighter gun laws, but the gun loving minority is much more
adamant and organized. That’s why the abolition of the Second
Amendment will not happen any time soon, but then again there is the
right to dream and the audacity of hope.
The
“right” to bear arms is an American anomaly, another example of
American exceptionalism gone wrong. It does not appear in the
constitutions of other democratic states nor is it recognized as a
universal human right.
In
the context of 18th
century America, in a world in which royal absolutism was the norm
and republican government the rare exception, the amendment makes
sense as a way to prevent a dictator or an oligarchy from
monopolizing weapons and establishing tyranny. In twenty-first
century America, the balance of power between the state and its
citizens has little to do with the possession of weapons by the
populace. The state has much more powerful weapons, including the
ability to manipulate consent through the mass media.
In
twenty-first century urban America, guns serve mostly to provide a
false sense of security at the cost of countless tragedies and tens
of thousands of senseless killings, many accidental. But the
proliferation of guns not only contributes to a tremendous toll in
the United States; they are also implicated in the ongoing drug wars
in Mexico and other parts of Latin America.
Abolishing
the Second Amendment doesn’t mean that no one would be allowed to
possess a gun. It would mean that possession of a firearm would be
not a right but a privilege given to those who have a need and the
necessary training. Legally owning a gun should, at the very least,
be as difficult as acquiring a driver’s license.
Restricting
firearms won’t eliminate murder. People will always find means to
kill. But surely it will reduce the number of homicides and suicides.
There is a reason why those who commit mass murder in schools,
offices, and civic centers use firearms rather than knives or axes.
Guns are very efficient killing tools.
Given
the political reality, the best we can hope for in the foreseeable
future are small, incremental steps to regulate access to guns. But
this is a very inadequate solution. Before the Supreme Court decision
declaring Washington, D.C.’s gun ban unconstitutional, it seemed
possible to tightly regulate guns through laws at the local and state
level. No more. The Court dismissed the argument that the right to
bear arms should be interpreted in the context of a well-regulated
militia rather than as an individual and almost absolute right. The
consequence of gun ownership as a right is, as we have seen over the
last weeks and months, that any nut case easily can acquire an
arsenal and undertake a killing spree.
Thus
the Second Amendment is one of those issues, like torture and the
death penalty, where only abolition will qualify this country for
full membership in the society of civilized nations.
