The jury chose to send the Pittsburgh Synagogue shooter to his death. But let’s talk about the use of the Second Amendment in ways that made his and the many mass killings possible.
You probably know the Second Amendment begins with the words “A well-regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free State…” You may not realize that was because militia members were expected to bring their own guns both for training and to any wars they had to fight. Today, soldiers are completely prohibited from bringing or using their own weapons. The Army supplies standard munitions for standardized guns. And of course, in 1791, when the amendment was ratified, you had to stuff powder and a shell into the barrel separately for each and every shot. So the Second Amendment as written is completely outdated and obsolete and should be treated that way – except this Court’s been in bed with political groups supporting gun rights fanatics.
Gun rights fanatics are determined to extend the Second Amendment to guns that were unavailable and unknown in the eighteenth century when the Amendment was created, for a purpose which no longer exists. Those guns now exist to challenge the militia, not to support it. Gun shows are full of claims about “tyranny,” obviously aimed at government and the people we’ve elected. Some in the gun rights movement think the language of the Second Amendment is sufficiently open to justify having howitzers, tanks and bombs – which itself makes clear the fanaticism of the movement and the danger of leaving the Second Amendment unchanged.
I have no doubt that Mr. Trump and his extreme wrong-wing followers are familiar with Hitler’s speeches and fully aware of the history of Hitler’s Brown Shirts in his takeover of Germany and are using the Second Amendment to arm the worst and most irresponsible people in America to threaten, intimidate and conquer the rest of us for their disgusting and inhumane purposes – unless we stop them.
Gun shows have also been full of racism and antisemitism. The gun rights movement has been driven by those dreaming of overturning the results of theCivilWar. Many of the fanatics refer to African-Americans as “Fourteenth Amendment citizens” as if the Constitution and the Fourteenth Amendment don’t count. The so-called “sovereign citizens” movement makes explicit that they don’t feel bound by the federal Constitution. And the people who stormed the Capital on January 6 to prevent counting the votes that reflected Biden’s victory made clear they felt entitled to overturn election results to suit themselves regardless of democratic rules. This is all about disloyalty.
I would rewrite the Second Amendment so that the right to own, possess or carry guns or weapons applies only to hunting rifles and protects state power to prohibit or control the possession or carriage of weapons outside areas set aside for hunting.
And I would defund the US Supreme Court in every possible way until its makeup has been changed. We should not allow them to continue doing the one thing which is most destructive of civilized and democratic society – spreading guns among us.
Steve Gottlieb’s latest book is Unfit for Democracy: The Roberts Court and The Breakdown of American Politics. He is the Jay and Ruth Caplan Distinguished Professor Emeritus at Albany Law School, served on the New York Civil Liberties Union board, on the New York Advisory Committee to the U.S. Civil Rights Commission, and as a US Peace Corps Volunteer in Iran.
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