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Writer's pictureJason Laurenzano

The 2nd Amendment Needs Amending!

More so now, given SCOTUS' June 2022 decision that is confounding, IT IS TIME TO “GO BIG”. Granted, the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) has yet to succeed but for several years it kept a critical issue on the nation’s agenda and in our citizenry’s consciousness, with long-standing grass roots energy and activity and demonstrations. It is time for the 2nd Amendment of the U. S. Constitution to be AMENDED. As U. S. Senator Durbin (D-IL) notes, the framers of the 2nd Amendment never conceived that it would lead to the carnage that it has. We must address the problem at its core.


It was not our Founding Fathers’ intention to interpret it as the SCOTUS has. We are earth’s most violent society because of the existence of the 2nd Amendment. While eliminating it is unfathomable, it is certainly plausible that it be amended so that it is narrowed in a way that preserves a more reasonable right to keep and bear arms. Let’s allow the country’s silent but overwhelming majority to put pressure on Congress to propose a reasonable amendment to then be submitted to the 50 states for consideration of ratification upon hearing the cry for change by its citizens.


An amendment would limit the judiciary’s (including the SCOTUS’) tendency to politicize the issue at the expense of the lives of innocent children and adults. Rather than just allowing HR Bills 8 and 5717 (and others) to die on the vine, or to accept the unfulfilling U. S. Senate's bipartisan bill, let us elevate the issue into a higher strata of national discourse and debate!


As Robert Longley recently put it [Thoughtco.com; 09/04/2021] “Constitutional amendments are intended to improve, correct, or otherwise revise the original document. The framers knew it would be impossible for the Constitution they were writing to address every situation that might come along.” Longley points out that Thomas Jefferson in a famous letter expressed his view that “Each generation” should have the “solemn opportunity” to update the constitution allowing it to “be handed on, with periodical repairs, from generation to generation, to the end of time.” Longley also reminds us that former Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens opined in 2018 that the 2nd Amendment’s right of the people to keep and bear arms be repealed. Perhaps that is too much to ask, but change can empower the people’s desire to greatly limit gun violence regardless of the greedy financial interests of the gun industry and its lobby. Let our fine nation shed itself of this curse and join the rest of the civilized world.




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