After the latest school shooting massacre, The Onion ran the following headline: “‘No Way To Prevent This,’ Says Only Nation Where This Regularly Happens.” Everyone has an opinion, though no one has a solution, to what ails our society as we collectively endure another gut-wrenching slaughter of children by an angry and despairing young killer. While most people want meaningful gun regulation and background checks for those buying weapons of war, no consequential legislation ever follows each recurrent butchery. It’s on us, isn’t it? We simply don’t own the political volition to make significant changes. Apparently, we are locked in an endless loop of gun violence with no imaginable way out. GOP senators and members of congress are well paid by the NRA and other pro-gun interests, and the united forces of the gun lobby vote to keep the Second Amendment as sacred as the embalmed corpse of Lenin in his tomb. To vote for anything remotely disturbing to the right to bear arms is political death. There you have it. Many Republicans privately admit that something must be done to curb mass shootings, sure, but they back away from every consequential proposal because it would be political suicide for a GOPer to vote for any sort of firearm ban. Oh, they may pass feel-good legislation that tinkers with auxiliary issues (mental health interventions, red flag warnings, and other inchoate and declawed legislation), which will do little or nothing to stem the flow of victims’ blood. So, one wonders, what could possibly change the deadlock on gun legislation?
How about 100 dead each week? There must be a limit beyond which lawmakers will finally do something meaningful. What will it take to get the attention of the GOP lawmakers? Perhaps a thousand slaughtered each week?? Still not enough? Maybe if we killed ten thousand a week, we’d get serious about curbing the slaughter. My question, then, is how many dead victims of mass shootings each week will we tolerate? According to the Washington Post not “a single week this year (2022) has passed without a least four mass shootings.”[1] We are just warming up. We are picking up speed. At some point, we must realize, finally, that the Second Amendment, like the Eighteenth Amendment (prohibition of producing, transporting, and selling intoxicating liquors), is obsolete in its application to 21st century mores.
The laws that limit and track gun sales and those that require proper registration of firearms, those well-meaning statutes do little to staunch the flow of weapons meant for wartime. Pundits underscore our negligible mental health resources as a problem; others claim our permissive society and violent video games lead to badly adjusted youth who become twisted killers. But, alas, at the heart of what ails us is this: too many guns are accessible in America (if 400 million guns are available in American households, someone is going to shoot someone else on a regular basis). Combine automatic weapon accessibility with our violent culture, and Bob’s your uncle.
Though it would be possible to amend the Constitution, repealing the Second Amendment is as likely as Saudi Arabia going solar. A constitutional convention could rewrite our foundational document, but that is a long process and would require three-fourths of the states to approve the new language. Nothing is going to happen, folks.
What would be possible, if sizable political shifts force the GOP to permit sensible changes in gun laws, is drafting reasonable limits on weapons of war brandished in public places. Imagine carrying an AK-47 to the Fourth of July celebration in your small town. Are you expressing your rights as an American citizen, or scaring the hell out of all your neighbors who suddenly give you wide berth and a good place in front of the bandstand? As things stand, it is possible to own a bazooka, a grenade launcher, a flamethrower, and a cannon if you have the appropriate licenses.
One way or another, the Second Amendment needs amending.
[1] Updated June 3, 2022 at 12:40 p.m. EDT