World News Korner

Retired Justice John Paul Stevens claims that we could fix the 2nd Amendment with five little words. And he is absolutely right.

Courtesy of the Washington Post:

The Second Amendment expressly endorsed the substantive common-law rule that protected the citizen’s right (and duty) to keep and bear arms when serving in a state militia. In its decision in Heller, however, the majority interpreted the amendment as though its draftsmen were primarily motivated by an interest in protecting the common-law right of self-defense. But that common-law right is a procedural right that has always been available to the defendant in criminal proceedings in every state. The notion that the states were concerned about possible infringement of that right by the federal government is really quite absurd.

As a result of the rulings in Heller and McDonald, the Second Amendment, which was adopted to protect the states from federal interference with their power to ensure that their militias were “well regulated,” has given federal judges the ultimate power to determine the validity of state regulations of both civilian and militia-related uses of arms. That anomalous result can be avoided by adding five words to the text of the Second Amendment to make it unambiguously conform to the original intent of its draftsmen. As so amended, it would read:

“A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms 'when serving in the Militia' shall not be infringed.”

Simple right? Just five little words, and the gun nuts would be shut down completely, and the NRA would lose much of its political influence.

Not only that but I think it's pretty clear to most people that THAT was what the amendment meant all along, and that the drafters never imagined how it would have been reinterpreted in modern times.

Of course the problem with this is that it is a non-starter.

There will never be such an amendment to add those five clarifying words.

Not in my lifetime anyhow.

And because of those "political realities" we will continue to see a never ending parade of coffins filled with innocent bystanders, children, and crime victims, as politicians wring their hands claiming that nothing can be done to stem the tide of violence.

If Sandy Hook was not enough to shake us out of our complacency and wake up the nation to the just how endangered we are by this amendment, then I simply do not know what it will take.

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