Posted on 02/18/2016 4:30:47 PM PST by Elderberry
Last week, author James Boice interviewed me for a Salon essay about what would happen if the Second Amendment is repealed. With Justice Scalia gone, the vitality of the constitutional right to keep and bear arms is in doubt. Here are a handful of quotes from the article.
Besides, "if the Second Amendment were repealed tomorrow, very little would actually change right away. Chicago and D.C. might try to reinstitute their handgun ban, but virtually every state constitution carries a provision upholding the right to keep guns," says Josh Blackman, a constitutional law expert at the South Texas College of Law.
Repealists respond that they understand that, but right away is not what they have in mind. Repeal would allow Americans over the ensuing decades, or even century, to write the laws we want with regard to firearms. If we want to regulate them like we do cars, we would be able to.
But we have never repealed one of the Bill of Rights. Could we even do that? Shouldn't those be left alone?
Blackman says there is nothing sacrosanct about them--like any other amendment they are subject to Article V of the Constitution. If we want to repeal one, if the criteria is met, then repeal it we will. But he warns of a slippery slope:
"Once you repeal one Amendment, society normalizes the process of repealing another," he says. "It casts our constitutional liberties as transitory."
...
In fact, I could find no data or example in which repeal of one amendment led to a feeding frenzy upon others, and professor Blackman declined to provide me one. The argument of a slippery slope is an ideological one and not based in fact.
...
Blackman says that repealists would be better off attacking the problem through legislation. Wait for a future Supreme Court that thinks more like John Paul Stevensthan Scalia to overturn Heller. But after decades of seeing the NRA exploiting the indecipherability of the Second Amendment to thwart or neuter every potentially meaningful gun control measure, repealists are all out of faith that legislation can coexist with the provision as is.
Blackman brings up another potential problem: A repeal effort could backfire. Red states would retaliate by proposing an amendment strengthening the right to bear arms--for example, upholding the right of constitutional carry--which in our red meat climate could very well see more support than repeal would.
...
Though Josh Blackman sees repeal as a nonstarter today, he says the future of the effort relies on future Supreme Court decisions. "If the Court one day holds the right to bear arms includes outside the home, that would overturn significant precedent and make repeal much more valuable."
Cold
Dead
Politicians
“Old times gone but not forgotten”...
Slavery was not an Amendment.
Use em or lose em ......smoke em if ya got em .....etc etc ..
“The Supreme Court cannot repeal any part of the Constitution, they can make interpretations, but they cannot repeal any of it. “
You’re obviously new to this.
Let me explain: The US Supreme Court doesn’t strike down clauses in the Constitution, it merely concludes they mean something different.
A revolution.
The constitution is not a guarantor, it is a delineation of our god-given rights.
According to polls, the majority of Hispanics are in favor of gun control. So importing millions more Hispanics wouldn’t have anything to do with an anti-gun agenda, now would it?
I’m sick of people posting their blogs, their vanities, etc. Ever since this campaign started, we’ve had no discussion of anything outside of Trump, and I feel our collective IQ has dropped. Now any FReeper who wants to do anything but lick Trump’s toes or talk about something that has no connection with him is stone out of luck.
That said, repealing an amendment is not easy and was used only once (to repeal Prohibition, an amendment which was in itself a little shaky).
I think we can take a deep breath and forget about this.
as Henry said, after the first one... the rest are free.
Where in the Constitution of the United States does it say that any of the first 10 amendments to the Constitution cannot be further amended or out right repealed.
And your conclusion is sir? Cause the constitution IS dead.
As I have been saying on this forum for over 15 years now....
It is either war or the camps. This next election will fix nothing.
Hope I’m wrong.
To those saying “too long & complicated to repeal”:
Two words: intermediate scrutiny.
A left leaning court can and will practically repeal by simply declaring semiautomatics, and later all guns above muskets, too dangerous for the public welfare. Done.
Festivities ensure, possibly before the Obama leaves office.
Anyone who can read on a fourth grade level or above can easily understand what the Second Amendment says.
I am a law-abiding gun owner, and I do not sit around “downing shots of whiskey”. You are presenting gun owners as the illiterate backwoods thugs the left wants to show us as. If anybody attempts to confiscate my guns, they will find me stone sober and willing to resist by any means necessary.
I didn't say the constitution was, I said the second amendment is the grantor of our rights against a tyrannical government.
The 2nd Amendment is a God Given right, it is what the Framers wanted, the arms to protect them....without those means to do so, we have no rights at all.
Yes....agreed.
The second is the guarantor of all of our other rights. Without it we are no better than serfs.
I doubt it could be repealed, but gutted.....likely.
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