An Amendment Whose Time is Long Gone

Today, millions of students across the country and around the world are protesting gun violence by walking out of classes for 17 minutes. So I feel it's time to say what is unspeakable in American politics:

The Second Amendment is a load of hooie.

A right to own guns? Seriously? Gun ownership is a civil right? We don't have a right to house ownership. We don't have a right to medication. We don't have a right to food. But we do have a right to guns.

Why guns? It's illegal in many states to carry brass knuckles, bayonets, spring-loaded knives, saps, but we have a right to guns. I'm sorry, this just doesn't make sense.

Do we have a right to self-defense? I would say so, yes. But why should the right to self-defense require a specific weapon? And how could a particular weapon be essential for human rights, when it didn't exist for the first 99,600 years of human history, was the dominant military arm for 300 years, and has been wildly outclassed by other weapons for the last 100 years? As far as assault rifles go, why does self defense require a weapon that can kill someone half a mile away?

The defenders of the Second Amendment say that an unarmed citizenry is at the mercy of its government. Arms are required to prevent an overzealous government from taking away your freedoms. Not only is this contradicted by the experience of every other developed Western democracy and Japan, which don't have rights to guns but do have democratic governments, but it is no longer realistic if it were ever put to the test.

Think of it this way. Imagine the US government decides it wants to take away the freedom of the good old boys of Texas. Ten thousand Texans turn out to defend the town, and they all have assault rifles. The US army closes in. The Texans brace themselves for the last stand. A cruise missile lands on top of them. Game over.

The only reason guns feel important to self-defense is that there are millions of guns out there, and fists and baseball bats are as useful a defense against guns as guns are against the US Army. But this is easily dealt with using the model of Ritalin. To prevent Ritalin being used in a dangerous way, the US government strictly controls its manufacture, ensuring that once the legitimate prescriptions have been filled, there is little Ritalin left for other uses. Occasionally this is irritating to people with prescriptions for Ritalin, as miscalculations can cause shortages, but most of the time it works. If we could contain the arms industry so they were not making millions of guns more than legitimate hunting and self-defense requires, there would not be millions of guns left for criminals.

One can debate the best methodology for getting guns away from mass shooters, but let's get over this Second Amendment crap so we can get onto the business of saving lives. Right? The notion of an essential human right to guns just hurts my brain.