Greg Krehbiel
How I would amend the 2nd
by Greg Krehbiel on 6 February 2012
As I’ve mentioned before, I think the second amendment doesn’t make much sense in the modern world. It assumes that the states would have citizen militias, and that the citizens would keep their own weapons.
That’s not how it works any more.
The second amendment doesn’t directly address the concept of owning a weapon for self defense. That would have been superfluous, since it had already said (read in its historical context) that citizens could own weapons.
I was thinking about all this on my jog this morning. Last week I got attacked by some kind of pit bull breed of a dog, so this week I carried a nice hard stick with me.
I don’t feel that I need a gun to protect myself against dogs, but I can imagine a situation where I might. What if several mean-spirited dogs were running loose? A stick wouldn’t quite cut it, and I would like to have the option to carry a gun if I wanted to.
(In fact, I wonder if getting bit gives me the right to apply for a concealed carry permit in Maryland?)
This is how I would rewrite the second amendment.
The federal government shall make no law restricting the rights of the states to form their own militias, and shall make no law restricting the rights of the people to own and carry small arms for self defense.
Since the amendment specifically addresses the federal government, this would allow the states to pass gun control laws if they wanted to. My amendment wouldn’t help me much in the People’s Republic of Maryland, but it would allow the states to try their own approaches, and would get this issue off the federal docket.
2012-02-06 » Greg Krehbiel
19 February 2012 @ 12:30 am
Nicely put, Greg.
The context of a militia is oft conveniently omitted from contemporary conversation. Although, I’d confess that it readily demonstrates perhaps a need to update our founding documents.
Seems they’re so sacrosanct to some, that they can’t be modified for more contemporary use and application.
I’m not in favor of our population having rampant access to guns. But, the mouthbreathing genie is WAY out of the bottle on this one … no getting it back in.