2A, Go Away

Gun rights activists, which, in a country with more guns than people is like having rain rights activists in Seattle, will tell you that the Second Amendment makes the United States unique in the world. And they are right. We are unique. We have more mass shootings than any other industrialized nation. We lose more than a thousand people per year just from accidents with guns. That’s more than some countries lose from gun deaths in total. In 2019, almost 40,000 people lost their lives at the barrel of a gun. And every week there seems to be a new smattering of shootings. All this data about gun violence in American can only lead a person to a single conclusion: the Second Amendment is an epic failure and must be modified, if not completely stricken from the Constitution.

Radical idea, I know. After all, we’ve been told by lobbyists our whole lives that our nation simply could not exist without the 2A. That there is nothing more American than owning a gun. The facts fly in the face of this line of thinking. For starters, many countries somehow manage to exist without unfettered gun access. Also consider that only about 40% of households actually have guns in them, meaning that the majority of Americans do NOT own guns and want nothing to do with them. They are beholden to a minority of people who continue to advocate for these dangerous killing devices as necessary safety measures. Forget that having a gun in your house actually makes you and your family less safe. Data does not care about propaganda.

If you think that you’re going to stop a crime from happening with your gun, you are living in a fantasy. Sure, packing heat might make you feel safer but it puts everyone else at risk. Let me disabuse you of whatever child-like notion you have of being a “good guy with a gun”. Real-life isn’t the movies. You aren’t John McClaine. You aren’t Wyatt Earp. You aren’t even Frank Drebin. You’re someone who isn’t remotely trained to do anything of any value in just about every circumstance that requires a violent solution. And that’s not coming from a Commie-Lib like me, that’s what the experts say.

Instead of needing a “good guy with a gun” maybe we should try not letting the bad guys get the guns in the first place. Crazy idea, I know. It’s not something we’ve tried yet but maybe, just maybe, it could work. Simply put, and again data (and common sense) bears this out, the more guns there are in any given location the better the chances for gun violence to happen.

Well, you might be saying, what if we just regulated guns?

That’s where that pesky Second Amendment comes in to rain on the gun control parade. Every time there’s been an effort to regulate guns, gun lobbyists and politicians point to it and say “nothing we can do”. And gosh darn it, they’re right! Taking the modern interpretation of the Second Amendment, which is largely a “fraud”, regulating guns would be unconstitutional. Again this isn’t just my opinion, it’s also the opinion of Chief Justice Warren Burger. You know, an expert on the Constitution.

But we do not live in a perfect world, only the one we allow monied interests to manufacture for us. And so, we must use the current definition of the Second Amendment which basically boils down to “I get to have guns, as many as I want, screw you.” Because of this insane understanding of what the Founders meant (not that they could have predicted machine guns), we are now forced to live in a society where gun violence spills across the headlines every day.

Enough is enough. It is time for the Second Amendment to go. That will be the only way to achieve actual gun control and have a meaningful impact on gun violence.

To be clear, I am not saying we should ban guns. While I would be in favor of that I am also aware of where I live and the costs that would come with enforcing such a ban. It would surely lead to civil war. No, I’m saying it shouldn’t be a right to own one, but a privilege. Like driving a car or going to baseball games. It should require lots of training. It should require insurance. It should be monitored who has the guns and how many. We now have the technology to trace and track every gun we produce if we wanted to. There is technology available that only allows a gun to fire based on who’s holding it. We do as much for car ownership so why not guns?

Gun control works. We don’t have to speculate about this, we have actual examples from around the world. When Australia was subjected to an awful mass shooting in 1997, they got rid of their guns. And wouldn’t you know it? Not only have they not had another mass shooting but their rates of homicides from guns dropped as well. Crazy how that worked.

Want another example? By changing people’s attitudes towards their right to own a gun, we can begin to change the cultural aspects that also impact gun violence in the US. Switzerland, a country that has a high rate of gun ownership, enjoys an extremely low rate of gun violence. Why? Because their collective attitudes toward guns are different than here.

You might notice that a lot of these clips have come from The Daily Show. It’s not for lack of trying to find more serious sources that are also entertaining. But there’s a paucity of serious coverage of how to change gun culture in America. It’s almost like we’ve given up. And maybe we have.

Some of the most popular gun control regulations right now seem to focus on two areas: making sure that guns don’t end up in the hands of people ill-equipped to use them judiciously, and reducing the amount of damage they can do should the worst happen. And in spite of the vast majority of Americans supporting these regulations, that dastardly Second Amendment nips them in the bud.

Background checks seem like a no-brainer and are already in place under a lot of circumstances. Unfortunately, gun laws are like condoms in that even a small hole can have lifelong consequences. Want to avoid a background check? Just buy a gun from a private seller or at a gun show. Seems unbelievable but such is the system in place now.

But what about keeping mentally ill people from getting guns? Well, that seems like a good idea in theory but since gun ownership is a right, not a privilege, it would seem unconstitutional to strip someone’s rights away for being mentally ill. What other rights should we take away from crazy people? Speech? Having a fair trial? Voting? Nope. Can’t do that. I mean, you could if gun ownership wasn’t a right.

Background checks are the bare minimum and in most cases (and again, data bears this out) don’t have any impact on gun deaths. In many of the most recent mass shootings, the perps were law-abiding gun owners… until they weren’t.

Solving America’s gun crisis needs a two-prong approach. First, we need to drastically reduce the number of weapons in our country. We can accomplish this through mandatory buyback programs, banning certain kinds of weapons from being manufactured, holding gun makers responsible for who they sell their guns to (and what happens after they’re sold), among other regulations. Second, we need to change American’s attitudes towards firearms. Both of these objectives cannot be achieved without changing the Constitution first.

Look, I am not saying this is going to be easy. And I do not expect anything to actually change regarding the Second Amendment. Americans are so entrenched in the false notion that our freedom is protected by the barrel of the gun and not through the will of the people that it seems almost impossible to get anything done. Perhaps it is. But at some point, as all addicts must (and Americans are addicted to guns), we must have a rock-bottom moment when we realize that what we’re doing just ain’t working. Some thought it would come after Sandy Hook when tiny children were butchered senselessly. But a lot of people don’t even think that was real. Some thought that it would come after Vegas when a man casually mowed down people from a hotel window. Nope, that didn’t do it either. I don’t know what it will take for Americans to wake up and see their country for what it is.

I don’t think I want to be around when it does.