This excellent article was written in 2000, 18 years ago, by Louis Marano. Pre-Heller. Both the author and I agree that efforts to repeal the Second Amendment are not out of the realm possibility.
WASHINGTON, Oct. 31 — America’s argument about guns won’t go away. It festers in the body politic and flares up when someone commits an atrocious act with a firearm. Partisans on both sides talk past one other in order to score points, but few minds are changed because, fundamentally, each side has a different answer to the question: What did the Framers mean by “a well regulated militia”?
It begs the question of intent to say, as anti-gun activists do, that because colonial and Revolutionary War militias evolved into today’s National Guard, the Second Amendment does not ensure to individuals the right to bear arms. It also begs the question to say that no federal court has ever ruled that the Constitution guarantees Americans the right to own a gun. Judicial rulings do not change history. In fact, no jurist questioned the constitutionality of individual gun ownership until 1905.
But why all the fuss? We are not slaves to the Framers’ intent. Times change. Maybe, as hunting guns and weapons of war have become more and more dissimilar, the Second Amendment has become obsolete. Maybe it was outdated when it was ratified. Even in the years following the Revolution, militia laws were seldom enforced except where the Indian threat was high (most militia units performed poorly in the War of 1812), and perhaps America’s remote location, not militiamen with flintlocks, preserved the independence of the new republic. Maybe the Second Amendment should be repealed.
by Lou Marano
