Chicago Tribune: Repeal The 2nd Amendment
If the 2nd amendment means individuals have a right to bear arms then the folks at the Chicago Tribune think the 2nd amendment should be no more.
That’s not the most shocking part of this editorial, though. The Tribune maintains - despite mountains of evidence from contemporary writings of the founding fathers which indicates that they were very much in favor of an individual right to bear arms - that the 2nd amendment doesn’t guarantee an individual right to bear arms and that the recent Supreme Court ruling stating that it does was a case of judicial activism.
The 2nd Amendment to the U.S. Constitution is evidence that, while the founding fathers were brilliant men, they could have used an editor.
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.
If the founders had limited themselves to the final 14 words, the amendment would have been an unambiguous declaration of the right to possess firearms. But they didn’t, and it isn’t. The amendment was intended to protect the authority of the states to organize militias. The inartful wording has left the amendment open to public debate for more than 200 years. But in its last major decision on gun rights, in 1939, the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously found that that was the correct interpretation.
On Tuesday, five members of the court edited the 2nd Amendment. In essence, they said: Scratch the preamble, only 14 words count.
In doing so, they have curtailed the power of the legislatures and the city councils to protect their citizens.
Notice that the Tribune isn’t at all worried about the ability of citizens to protect themselves. What they don’t get was that the 2nd amendment was intended as a last-ditch defense against tyranny. As the Declaration of Indepence itself states:
when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.
How are we, the citizens, to throw off an oppressive government if the only people allowed to be armed in our society are agents of that government?
No, the founders meant to invest in the populace the right to be armed so that if the American government should one day become too oppressive we could overthrow it and replace it with something better. And that has been the universally accepted definition of the 2nd amendment from the day it was ratified until just a few decades ago when the liberal movement, which in general seeks to consolidate all power with the government, decided that the power to be armed is something to only be enjoyed by the government and its agents.
I will say, though, that it is refreshing to see gun control advocates finally admit that the only way to further their agenda is to repeal the 2nd amendment and not seek to rob citizens of their rights through extra-Constitutional means. And given that the vast majority of Americans view the second amendment favorably, it’s safe to say that the gun control advocates won’t be getting their way any time soon.
