Small Steps toward a Compelling Goal, a Safer and more Secure United States

Two weeks ago, I launched this ambitious effort to help foster a national nonpartisan discussion on a Second Amendment for the 21st century.   In this early going, I am both encouraged and discouraged about these initial small steps toward making our great country safer, more secure, and more tranquil as a society.

A tall order or tilting at windmills a la Don Quixote, my friends tell me.  But it is one that motivates me every day.  I hope millions of fellow Americans also see the pervasive and corrosive effect the high level of gun violence is having on our country and its stability.

So, to take a moment at the start of this effort, I wanted to provide some context and background to this undertaking.  First, what I wrote about December 14, 2012 and Sandy Hook is absolutely true; I sat down to start a writing project on the Second Amendment early that morning and within an hour or so was given yet another reason to commit to making a positive impact.

Secondly, my web search over months if not years has yielded a paucity of credible proposals about how to address the problem of thousands of innocent victims and the flawed legal 2nd Amendment framework that enables the perpetrators of such mindless violence and death.  It is hard to find any fresh thinking or ideas.  For his part, retired Justice Stevens made an attempt in his April 11, 2014 Washington Post article (https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-five-extra-words-that-can-fix-the-second-amendment/2014/04/11/f8a19578-b8fa-11e3-96ae-f2c36d2b1245_story.html, where he argued adding the words “when serving in the Militia” would fix the problem.

But, as I read the words and thoughts of such a learned man, I realized that he was mired, just as were the “out of my cold, dead hands” ideologues, in a 230-year-old text that had truly lost all meaning and relevance in our 21st century.  My pursuit of fresh ideas on the web yielded little if nothing.  I was particularly perplexed at the commitment by people on both sides, those who favor liberty with great violence and those who favor slightly less liberty and possibly much reduced violence, to a narrative and context that do not compute today.

So I began my search for a conceptual common ground that reflected current societal views, mores and equities, one that accounted for the march of history, and provided a common ground that truly did not impact on gun owners whose use of their firearms was justified, commonly understood and accepted. 

The result, a very notional draft amended Amendment: “Recognizing the imperative of ensuring public safety as well as the individual’s right to personal security in the home, citizens and legal residents of majority age who demonstrate responsible ability and judgment in handling firearms will have the right to possess duly registered small arms and hunting rifles.”

What I have learned over the years since Sandy Hook, the months since New York Rifle and Pistol Association v Bruen made it onto the Supreme Court docket, and the days since embarking on https://asecondamendmentfor21stcenturyamerica.org/, the pursuit of a meaningful national discussion on how firearms fit into a rational and free American society in 2021 is difficult for people not accustomed to searching for truly fresh ideas and thinking.  It is much easier to take the easy road of embracing the familiar while shrinking from the challenge and sometimes long road of working for real, positive and meaningful change.  They want to better our broader community and nation but just can’t get there from here.

So I hope that readers will ponder this challenge, see the potential in thoughtful analysis and truth, and offer their views and proposals to energize the discussion.

In future postings, I will focus on those who represent real obstacles to the discussion and change. 

One might start with national political figures who believe that defending the Constitution doesn’t mean trying to change it. They apparently are ignorant of the fact that there have been 27 Constitutional amendments, nine of which have come in the past one hundred years and, of those, five were enacted since 1960.  A record of steady change in a 230-year-old constitution.  Of course, it is daunting to think of the struggle for such amendments today, given that the most recent amendment, the 27th, on Congressional salaries, was enacted in 1992, some two centuries since it was first proposed as part of the 1791 Bill of Rights.

The spotlight should fall urgently on those national, state and local law enforcement leaders whose passivity has put their rank and file officers in such danger as they work to ensure public safety.  It is hard to grasp how these leaders fail to see the link between the scale of gun violence within our communities and those unfortunate and tragic cases of excessive use of lethal force by police on patrol.  One could even say this blindness is unconscionable.  It is time for them to step up to the plate for change that protects both their officers and the general public as well. 

This occurs against a backdrop of constant and incredible pressure from 2nd amendment ideologues, pressure that threatens the country’s stability, with the Supreme Court poised to allow broader concealed carry and red state legislatures pushing for open carry wherever possible. 

Lastly, there are the bogus analyses seeking to obscure the impact of gun violence via irrelevant statistical correlations and obfuscations.  These efforts are no more than a smokescreen meant to disguise the simplest of truths, that the existing prevalence of firearms, and the increase in their lethality, has made the United States into the most violent of industrialized countries by far.  And the concerted effort to prevent limits or constraints on the firepower at the disposal of the deranged or diabolical are directly responsible for the scale of our mass casualty events, most tragically symbolized by the ten-minute, nine rounds a second slaughter of some 60 innocent people and the wounding of another 600 in Las Vegas in 2017.

Let me offer my sincerest thanks to you who are motivated to join or support this effort.  I am trying to place history, the arguments, and the goal in clear context.  Give this your attention, spread the word, and let’s all work together to make this a better, safer and more secure country and society.

SCOTUS will rule on concealed carry in June; there is no time to waste in putting the national spotlight on the Second Amendment’s flawed 27 word text and the clear irrelevance of its opening clause, which once recognized, precludes any decisions sustaining an open ended “shall not be infringed”. 

There are better ways to protect the rights of legitimate gun owners. Let’s find them together.