Posted on 06/14/2016 9:40:20 AM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
I teach the Constitution for a living. I revere the document when it is used to further social justice and make our country a more inclusive one. I admire the Founders for establishing a representative democracy that has survived for over two centuries.
But sometimes we just have to acknowledge that the Founders and the Constitution are wrong. This is one of those times. We need to say loud and clear: The Second Amendment must be repealed.
As much as we have a culture of reverence for the founding generation, it's important to understand that they got it wrong — and got it wrong often. Unfortunately, in many instances, they enshrined those faults in the Constitution. For instance, most people don't know it now, but under the original document, Mitt Romney would be serving as President Obama's vice president right now because he was the runner-up in the last presidential election. That part of the Constitution was fixed by the Twelfth Amendment, which set up the system we currently have of the president and vice president running for office together.
Much more profoundly, the Framers and the Constitution were wildly wrong on race. They enshrined slavery into the Constitution in multiple ways, including taking the extreme step of prohibiting the Constitution from being amended to stop the slave trade in the country's first 20 years. They also blatantly wrote racism into the Constitution by counting slaves as only 3/5 of a person for purposes of Congressional representation. It took a bloody civil war to fix these constitutional flaws (and then another 150 years, and counting, to try to fix the societal consequences of them).
There are others flaws that have been fixed (such as about voting and Presidential succession), and still other flaws that have not yet been fixed (such as about equal rights for women and land-based representation in the Senate), but the point is the same — there is absolutely nothing permanently sacrosanct about the Founders and the Constitution. They were deeply flawed people, it was and is a flawed document, and when we think about how to make our country a more perfect union, we must operate with those principles in mind.
In the face of yet another mass shooting, now is the time to acknowledge a profound but obvious truth – the Second Amendment is wrong for this country and needs to be jettisoned. We can do that through a Constitutional amendment. It's been done before (when the Twenty-First Amendment repealed prohibition in the Eighteenth), and it must be done now.
The Second Amendment needs to be repealed because it is outdated, a threat to liberty and a suicide pact. When the Second Amendment was adopted in 1791, there were no weapons remotely like the AR-15 assault rifle and many of the advances of modern weaponry were long from being invented or popularized.
Sure, the Founders knew that the world evolved and that technology changed, but the weapons of today that are easily accessible are vastly different than anything that existed in 1791. When the Second Amendment was written, the Founders didn't have to weigh the risks of one man killing 49 and injuring 53 all by himself. Now we do, and the risk-benefit analysis of 1791 is flatly irrelevant to the risk-benefit analysis of today.
Gun-rights advocates like to make this all about liberty, insisting that their freedom to bear arms is of utmost importance and that restricting their freedom would be a violation of basic rights.
But liberty is not a one way street. It also includes the liberty to enjoy a night out with friends, loving who you want to love, dancing how you want to dance, in a club that has historically provided a refuge from the hate and fear that surrounds you. It also includes the liberty to go to and send your kids to kindergarten and first grade so that they can begin to be infused with a love of learning. It includes the liberty to go to a movie, to your religious house of worship, to college, to work, to an abortion clinic, go to a hair salon, to a community center, to the supermarket, to go anywhere and feel that you are free to do to so without having to weigh the risk of being gunned down by someone wielding a weapon that can easily kill you and countless others.
The liberty of some to own guns cannot take precedence over the liberty of everyone to live their lives free from the risk of being easily murdered. It has for too long, and we must now say no more.
Finally, if we take the gun-rights lobby at their word, the Second Amendment is a suicide pact. As they say over and over, the only way to stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun. In other words, please the gun manufacturers by arming even the vast majority of Americans who do not own a gun.
Just think of what would have happened in the Orlando night-club Saturday night if there had been many others armed. In a crowded, dark, loud dance club, after the shooter began firing, imagine if others took out their guns and started firing back. Yes, maybe they would have killed the shooter, but how would anyone else have known what exactly was going on? How would it not have devolved into mass confusion and fear followed by a large-scale shootout without anyone knowing who was the good guy with a gun, who was the bad guy with a gun, and who was just caught in the middle? The death toll could have been much higher if more people were armed.
The gun-rights lobby's mantra that more people need guns will lead to an obvious result — more people will be killed. We'd be walking down a road in which blood baths are a common occurrence, all because the Second Amendment allows them to be.
At this point, bickering about the niceties of textual interpretation, whether the history of the amendment supports this view or that, and how legislators can solve this problem within the confines of the constitution is useless drivel that will lead to more of the same. We need a mass movement of those who are fed up with the long-dead Founders' view of the world ruling current day politics. A mass movement of those who will stand up and say that our founding document was wrong and needs to be changed. A mass movement of those who will thumb their nose at the NRA, an organization that is nothing more than the political wing of the country's gun manufacturers, and say enough is enough.
The Second Amendment must be repealed, and it is the essence of American democracy to say so.
Another name for the list. Cohen’s students should sue him for malpractice.
They also blatantly wrote racism into the Constitution by counting slaves as only 3/5 of a person for purposes of Congressional representation. It took a bloody civil war to fix these constitutional flaws (and then another 150 years, and counting, to try to fix the societal consequences of them).
This idiot doesn’t know that the 3/5’s stipulation helped the slaves. This reduced their oppressive owners political influence. The author is trying to appeal to ignorant people.
You will never have to fight to keep your weapons. Gun confiscation ain’t happening. Even if they passed it, it wouldn’t work. This is simply liberal politicians trying to garner votes from their fearful an ignorant constituents.
He doesn’t teach the constitution for a living. He opinionates it.
Well, that kinda ends the old gungrabbers go to line “No one wants to take your guns!!” Which, we all know is a bunch of B.S. But whatever. Let the games begin.
Maybe Mr Cohen would like to take them himself. I’ll happily give him my address and a time when I will be home. I don’t like gun grabbers. He won’t be welcomed. But he will be considerably lighter. Assuming all pass throughs, of course.
Repealing the 2nd Amendment does not erase my right to keep and bear arms. Repealing it just means that people like David S. Cohen will be watering a tree called “Liberty” and then maybe this time we’ll make the 2nd Amendment first.
people killed died at the hands of two women and a 14 year old boy.
= = =
Hellary, VJ, and bo.
How many died from these hands, they did not know they were acting as patriots did they?
multiple /s
David Cohen, any relation to Marty Cohen? (a little Spanish lingo)
There are probably only a handful of honest constitutional scholars teaching in law schools today. They will not hire profs. true to the constitution.
This guy is a tool in more ways than one.
Liberals basically only love invented rights, not enumerated ones.
AS USUAL, some stupid writer who has no clue that the 2nd Amendment is there to keep Obama-types from taking my property and putting me in jail because I don’t agree.
Also, no clue that The Constitution would never have been ratified without the 3/5 of a person clause, as the slave states never would have signed on, because of the lop-sided (they thought) House of Representatives that would have resulted without counting the slave population.
And what IF Romney WERE the VP? As liberal as he is, this would still have further de-centralized power. That’s a GOOD thing, idiot. We’ve seen, too, how badly it turned out to choose Senators by popular vote.
Just because you can type and have a job with a big magazine doesn’t mean you have a brain. Of course, if you want to be lead by a king or dictator, you don’t care about the truth of how BRILLIANT the founders were.
I guess every one has their own opinion, but maybe it will change when the moslems starts really having their way with the infidels.
If crooked Clinton gets to be president, we have seen nothing yet.
And leaving every thing else out i would rather be shot as axed to death.
For starters the Founders established a republic and not a democracy.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.