Second Amendment Repeal

   The thirteen "free and independent states" that declared independence from Britain in 1776 were so worried about domination by a national army that they amended their Constitution a few years later to guarantee "a well regulated militia" because it was "necessary to the security of a free state."
   It said nothing about individuals carrying their own arsenals around wherever they pleased. Rather, the Second Amendment specified the plural, "people," and their right to "keep and bear arms" as part of a state militia.
   Or, as retired Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens put it in an op-ed piece in the New York Times, "Concern that a national standing army might pose a threat to the security of the separate states led to the adoption of that amendment."
   At the time, there was no federal army that amounted to much, and that's the way things stood until after the Civil War.
   In fact, when the Civil War started, the North Carolina militia was larger than the federal army. Moreover, what there was of a federal army was busy on the frontier trying to keep Native American tribes from causing trouble for settlers.
   As it is, the various state militias have become part of the National Guard, initially under state control but they can also be nationalized and taken under federal control. That happened during the Civil Rights era when some states used their militia/National Guard to put down demonstrations. The federal government then took charge of the state military to put an end to its violence against protestors.

   Now there is talk of repealing the Second Amendment entirely, but there has been little talk of a replacement or a revision.
   So what would be the consequences of repeal? First, the last phrase of the Second Amendment, that the right to have guns "shall not be infringed" would be eliminated, giving the federal government the ability to do just that: Impose national gun control measures. As it is, each state does impose gun controls, which realistically amount to infringement on individuals and their ability to buy guns.
   Moreover, these laws vary from state to state, despite challenges by the National Rifle Association to allow those with concealed carry permits issued by one state to travel to any other state, taking their guns with them, in effect violating the laws of the second state.
   Repealing the Second Amendment would indeed bring chaos to those already owning multiple weapons of mass killing, but it would also enable the federal government to enact nationwide regulations as to who could buy a gun or guns.
   As for the NRA argument that more guns means more protection, the counter to that is the reality that while there are more guns in America than there are people -- more than 350 million -- America also suffers more gun-related violence and death than any other nation.
   Therefore, more guns means more violence and death.
   Further, as to the NRA challenge that federal regulation of firearms clashes with Second Amendment rights, the answer to that can be to repeal the Second Amendment. Therefore, there would be no clash, and federal regulation of firearms would become constitutionally valid.
   Will it happen? The Constitution has already been amended 26 times, including one that repealed an earlier amendment that prohibited alcoholic beverages. The 18th Amendment, which began the Prohibition Era, lasted just 13 years, until it was repealed by the 21st Amendment in 1933.
   Rather than eliminating problems associated with alcoholic drink, Prohibition only increased other problems of crime, violence and illegal consumption.
   Similarly, allowing more guns as a way of reducing gun violence contradicts logic and experience, and amounts to what Chief Justice Warren Burger called "one of the greatest pieces of fraud, I repeat the word fraud, on the American public by special interest groups (the NRA) that I have ever seen in my lifetime."
   On balance, it may well be that repealing the Second Amendment, thus enabling stricter, national gun control laws, would be a good idea. Meanwhile, it will be up to each state to limit gun ownership and to stand up to the NRA.