Follow her on Twitter: can read diverse opinions from our Board of Contributors and other writers on the Opinion front page, on Twitter and in our daily Opinion newsletter. Repealing the Second Amendment may look like a long shot today, but if progressives and moderates show up in full force to vote the right people into office over the next couple of decades, nothing is impossible.Ĭarli Pierson, a New York licensed attorney, is an opinion writer with USA TODAY, and a member of the USA TODAY Editorial Board. It took five decades of campaigning for conservatives to get the constitutional right to abortion overturned in the Supreme Court. After 14 students and three staff were killed at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland in 2018, none other than the late Justice John Paul Stevens called for repealing the Second Amendment in an opinion column in The New York Times. I am not the only lawyer to point to the obvious solution. In order to get rid of the Second Amendment we'd use Article V of the Constitution, which sets out two options: Congress, through a joint resolution passed by a two-thirds vote, or by a congressional convention after petitions from two-thirds of the state legislatures, could propose the amendment. Our Constitution is "the world’s longest surviving written charter of government," according to the Senate's website, but it is far from immutable: "The Constitution has been amended 27 times, most recently in 1992." Suzette Hackney: Jayland Walker left his gun in the car. They were not intended to protect the people from AR-15-style weapons. They were not intended to protect the people from one another. ![]() The Second and Third Amendments, meant to be read together, were about protecting the people from the tyranny of professional, full-time militaries (much like the one we have now). In 1791, when the Second Amendment was adopted, the Founders had one thing in mind: To protect the people against a standing army, specifically, the muskets of the British standing army of King George III. But those 13 words provide critical historical context, which our cherry-picking "originalist" Supreme Court has glossed over in favor of expanding gun rights far beyond what the Founders ever envisioned for the Bill of Rights, and at the expense of American lives. ![]() "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." We are often reminded of the last 14 words of the amendment but completely overlook the first 13. Highland Park mom's text: 'We're hiding.' Then she and her daughter fled in terror. We need to take action: Our well-meaning hashtags won't stop racist mass shootings Meanwhile, other countries tighten gun laws after mass shootings, including Canada, which still has relatively high gun ownership rates but much lower gun homicide rates compared with the United States.Īmerica's only option is to take drastic action and reform our antiquated Constitution. The other prohibits the marketing of guns to minors a practice he found so reprehensible that his staff released a video of Newsom clutching an AR-15 semiautomatic rifle as he ripped the gun. But after every shooting, all we see from most Republican lawmakers is idle talk about "locking doors" and the ever-popular "thoughts and prayers." There have been 2,069 school shootings in America since 1970, according to the Center for Homeland Defense and Security's Naval Postgraduate School's K-12 School Shooting Database. And while we have just over 4% of the world's population, as of 2017 we had over 40% of the world's civilian-owned guns. In 2021, more than 45,000 Americans were killed by firearms. ![]() There were a whopping 692 mass shootings in the United States last year, according to the Gun Violence Archive, which defines mass shootings as having "a minimum of four victims shot, either injured or killed, not including any shooter who may also have been killed or injured in the incident." It doesn't get easier: Covering mass shootings has become routine – and endless The problem: Americans can't handle gunsĪmericans can't handle their guns. How to prevent the next Derek Chauvin: Weaken unions and make police pay for misconduct It's time to say, "Hey, hey, ho, ho, the Second Amendment's gotta go." Adventure Game.Much like we did away with the 18th (prohibition) when it no longer served us, it's time to do away with the archaic constitutional amendment holding Americans hostage in their own country.
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