Overview:
The article discusses the urgent need to amend the Second Amendment to address gun violence in America, highlighting the challenges and potential pathways for reform.
By Jene Galvin
Guest Columnist
Look, just because some old White guys back in the 1700s said it was so, doesn’t mean it should be in 2024. In fact, I’m not even sure they said what some think they did.
For example, the right to have a “well-regulated militia,” which the Second Amendment discusses, could simply mean a national or state guard, not that every American can walk around with a gun.
But even with a more conservative interpretation, it’s time to stare down the cold reality: our Second Amendment, whatever it says or means, is killing us. And it’s time to change it.
The telling stats are everywhere. Or skip the numbers and just follow the media or talk to your family and friends. Guns are killing Americans.
Let’s start with a quick look at some statistics. According to recent Pew Research, about a third of Americans own a gun, often a bunch of them. Another 11% live in a household where a gun is present. Research also says the vast majority of our countrymen and women want way more gun restrictions. Maybe most importantly, guns are the predominant tool for killing, including suicide, in our land.
And nowhere is safe – not stores, schools, bus stops, public celebrations, night clubs, a neighbor’s front door, even faith gatherings. No other developed country in the world comes close to our ugly gun killing reality.
And while most guns are possessed by rural White people – Pew Research again – here in Cincinnati and in other urban areas, guns are in the streets, even in the waist bands of some of our youth. I spent a lifetime working with kids, and fights happened now and then. But today fists don’t always fly, increasingly bullets do.
Our problem is conservative politicians, largely from rural states backed by the National Rifle Association, who have clamored for a gun-rich America on the unproven promise that more guns keep us all safer. So, who’s surprised that all this gun loving means plenty of them are drifting across demographics to teens, with their parents usually completely in the dark?
I keep waiting for some tipping point where the majority says, that’s it, time for change, which is way past the “thoughts and prayers” phase. Even when a couple of fighting kids start shooting at each other at the Kansas City Chiefs’ Super Bowl celebration killing and injuring others in a crossfire; nothing.
But the day will come. It must. To dial back our Second Amendment to where bump stocks, large clips and assault rifles are banned, and certain behaviors or conditions disqualify you from gun ownership, maybe even where handguns get restricted. Well, that will be a painful, complicated and protracted process.
Not to go all schoolteacher on you, but the constitutional path to a U.S. amendment goes like this. A two-thirds vote of both Houses of Congress can request one, or the states can instigate one through conventions set up for that purpose. Then three-fourths of those state conventions must ratify the amendment, or three-fourths of the states’ legislatures.
As you can see, it’s a hard push, but it has been done 27 times, including giving women the vote, limiting a president to two terms and the abolition of slavery. But fairly recently, the Equal Rights Amendment got ratified in Congress, but fell short of state ratification by the time of its procedural deadline.
So, could we pull it off and slow gun violence since our urban and rural neighborhoods are getting dampened with our own blood?
The lay of the political land is unfavorable. Even though far fewer people live in relatively less populated states, those states have disproportionate power because those same old White guys in the 1700s couldn’t see the future very clearly. So, they gave each state two United States senators and a constitutional amendment process giving, say, North Dakota the same influence as, say, New York. And those rural states are the ones with the most guns and conservative stubbornness.
But a lot of dark things have changed in America that people at the time said couldn’t. So, let’s take a stand and make a start.
Amend the Second.
Editor’s Note: The views expressed in this commentary piece do not necessarily the express the opinions of The Cincinnati Herald.