Now Is The Time To Revise The Second Amendment

As the casualties from America’s long love affair with guns continue to mount to levels unparalleled in other developed countries, the idea of vastly overhauling the Second Amendment seldom comes up. In 1982, Senator Orrin Hatch (R-UT) was commissioned to do a history of the Second Amendment in Strom Thurmond’s Senate Judiciary Committee. This is when the lost amendment (as it was known because no one ever wrote about it) was successfully manipulated to serve the bottom line of the profit-driven National Rifle Association. This was the beginning of the end of sensible discussion on guns. The NRA along with Reagan and Utah Senator Hatch helped usher in an era where hundreds of thousands Americans have needlessly been killed by a gun.

The facts are very clear: nations with stricter almost prohibitive laws on guns have minute levels of gun deaths when compared to our country. The Second Amendment wasn’t designed to arm all citizens. Verifiable statistics and study shows states with higher rates of gun ownership had disproportionately large numbers of deaths from firearm-related homicides. This is fact. More guns equal more homicides, suicides and gun-related accidental deaths. Naturally, the gun-pushers will pawn the issue off as a mental health matter, but the prevalence of mental illness in a society is only weakly correlated with gun-related deaths. Guns are responsible, in the USA, for the deaths of more people, occurring more easily and more often than gun-free societies.

A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed. This does not mean every Tom, Dick and Henrietta out there should brandish a lethal firearm. The big problem is we have over 300,000,000 guns in America. How can our nation change the insanely psychotic statistic that there are 88 guns for every 100 Americans.

One way to vastly lower the number of weapons is to offer a gun buyback program. These events have enjoyed tremendous success for the gun owners and the community. In cities like Baltimore, Los Angeles and Phoenix gun buy backs were wildly popular and beneficial. What happens when the gun buy back becomes MANDATORY by law? How does that fare?
After the tragedy in Port Arthur, Tasmania in 1996, Australians collectively decided to outlaw casual gun ownership and made it extremely complicated to own a firearm. The buy back was a success and the country has not had a mass shooting in over seventeen years. By outlawing all semi-automatic rifles, along with semi-automatic and pump-action shotguns, and then created a restrictive system of licensing and ownership controls, the Australians enjoy a far lower gun homicide rate. It CAN be done in America, but no one will try to battle gun manufacturers who enjoy the fewest restrictions on liability and loosest regulations of any industry.

Here are a few lesser known facts about the gun industry. 
1. A federal firearms trace database is off-limits to the public.The ATF can’t require gun dealers to conduct an inventory to account for lost or stolen guns; records of customer background checks must be destroyed within 24 hours if they are clean enough to allow the sale; and trace data can’t be used in state civil lawsuits or in an effort to suspend or revoke a gun dealer’s license.
2. The military can’t impose additional regulations on service members who own guns. Less than one year after the Fort Hood shooting, Sen. Jim Inhofe, R-Okla., introduced a bill prohibiting new regulations on Defense Department personnel’s private guns. It also prohibited commanders from inquiring into private gun ownership.
3. You can carry a gun inside a national park or check a gun when riding Amtrak. In 2009, Congress voted to allow visitors to national parks and wildlife refuges to carry a loaded firearm. (Previously, the guns had to be locked, unloaded and stowed away).
4. (Perhaps most importantly) The gun industry is shielded from many lawsuits involving criminal misuse of guns. The law has not stopped gun litigation, but it has created an obstacle for litigation, where judges are more inclined to dismiss suits of negligence filed against manufacturers and dealers for not taking proper safety precautions.
5. Congress has removed federal funding for firearms-related research. So in actuality, we don’t have accurate data reflecting the trend that a gun in the home makes you FAR MORE LIKELY to be a victim of gun violence than those in households without a gun.

The lower 48 states are all connected to one or more states. Prohibitive gun laws in one state will not change the rates of gun homicides if an adjacent state has much looser laws. The entire country must be united to achieve the goal of lessening the unacceptable levels of gun-violence. With a mass shooting almost weekly, we have yet to hit the tipping point where people are fed up enough to change the gun culture. The lawmakers are far too well financed by gun companies to be motivated to change policy. The myths that more guns indicate a safer society are believed by far too many.

It’s time to stop the malicious, calloused and irresponsible people from twisting the Second Amendment and put sanity back in our legal system. Senseless gun proliferation is the problem, PERIOD! Guns kill, statistics don’t lie and Americans don’t need to die needlessly from senseless gun ownership. No small change will make a difference. It’s time to apply the Second Amendment as it was intended. If only outlaws have guns, wouldn’t their chances of ownership be a hell of a lot smaller if the Black Market price of a gun approached $10,000+? Couldn’t the problem be mitigated by charging exorbitant prices for ammunition? Of course these ideas could work, but the country has to have the guts to make life saving, drastic changes.

By: VegasJessie

A resident of Las Vegas Nevada, a graduate of the University of Oklahoma as a Political Science major. Very motivated to get people to participate in the electoral process.