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Anti-gunner wants to rewrite Second Amendment

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The right to keep and bear arms is enshrined in the Second Amendment. We’re not the only nation that has such a provision in our constitution–Mexico, surprisingly, has a provision that’s supposed to be similar to it, though it clearly doesn’t work–but we’re the only nation that seemingly tries to respect it.

Yet that’s a problem for some.

Take an op-ed writer at the Washington Post. He doesn’t like how Bruen interpreted the Second Amendment.

Two and a half months into 2023, there have been more than 110 mass shootings in the United States and more than 8,700 overall gun deaths, according to the Gun Violence Archive. Rather than that creating a sense of emergency in our nation’s legislatures and courts, we’re seeing quite the opposite: the most extraordinary court-driven rollback of laws meant to reduce gun violence we’ve seen.

Last year, the Supreme Court handed down its ruling in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen, in which Justice Clarence Thomas declared that for any contemporary gun regulation to be constitutional, the government would have to identify a “historical analogue” to it from the nation’s founding. The result has been a transformation in U.S. gun laws that is producing far more chaos than expected, and leading to outcomes far more divorced from the public will than anyone predicted.

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In the broadest terms, says Blocher, “the pre-Bruen settlements actually did reflect where most Americans are on guns.” Clear majorities support universal background checks, “red flag” laws that allow guns to be taken from people who pose a danger to others, and licensing requirements to own a handgun.

But any or all such measures could now potentially be declared unconstitutional. The Supreme Court has effectively rewritten the Second Amendment in ways that the vast majority of Americans, even gun owners, disagree with.

But if we’re going to rewrite the Second Amendment, we should do it through the normal constitutional process, and establish one that works for the contemporary world.

In other words, he wants to rewrite it so that it means absolutely nothing.

An actual rewrite of the Second Amendment that allowed gun control to any degree is a version of the Second Amendment that will allow any and all desired gun controls one wants to imagine, possibly short of a total gun ban.

The thing is, most nations lack total bans. Usually, someone can get a firearm. The question is just how restrictive are the laws and do they prohibit anyone but the elite from getting them. However, a total ban isn’t really where gun control is likely to go.

Instead, what we’ll see is a functional ban, a set of rules so restrictive that a ban might as well be in place. Take machine guns. Sure, you can buy them, but the rules surrounding them put them out of the reach of most people.

So yeah, any attempt to rewrite the Second Amendment would essentially make the right to keep and bear arms meaningless in this country.

That’s likely the plan, though.

Further, let’s also remember that Bruen never rewrote anything. It simply went a lot closer to that whole “shall not be infringed” thing than the author would like. So no, we won’t be rewriting a damn thing.

Is immigration bad for the Second Amendment?

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Best-selling author and attorney Mark Smith is a Second Amendment advocate whose videos I watch on a regular basis. His YouTube channel titled “The Four Boxes Diner” is very popular and is a great source of information on legal developments in the Second Amendment world.

Recently, Smith posted a thoughtful video on the perils that mass immigration – both legal and illegal – pose to the Second Amendment. In the video, Smith himself did not take a position on the issue, but highlighted arguments on what could happen with mass immigration and rapid demographic change.

This piqued my interest for two reasons: one, I am an immigrant and a Second Amendment advocate myself, and two, I have also written about long-term threats posed to our right to keep and bear arms (shameless plug ahead!) in a book co-authored with Greg Camp: “Each One, Teach One: Preserving and protecting the Second Amendment in the 21st century and beyond.” 

In the above work, I touched upon how immigration plays into the various threats to the Second Amendment, not because immigration per se is dangerous, but as a factor that compounds the mass ignorance which is the real threat. Most immigrants, unless they’re naturalized citizens, cannot vote. So, the unrelenting attacks on the Second Amendment cannot be attributed to immigrants because the mass ignorance lies in the body politic of natural-born American citizens, who are the absolute majority of voters in this country. 

In fact, American political ignorance is so bad that most American adults cannot even name the three branches of government. Clearly, immigration did not cause that.

As expected, the comments in reaction to Smith’s video have their fair share of people who think that immigration itself is a problem. From my vantage point, I find it totally ironic because every single vocal gun control activist that I know is a white progressive and an umpteenth-generation American, some even being descendants of American revolutionaries. On the flip side, some of the most ardent supporters of the Second Amendment are immigrants, who have taken it upon themselves to do a job that many natural-born American citizens refuse to do: unapologetically defending the U.S. Constitution and Bill of Rights.

My religious roots, cultural background, and upbringing are all contrary to gun ownership. I grew up in India and was raised vegetarian in a religious Hindu family. People from my caste background historically have been academics and priests who don’t wield weapons. My grandfather is a Gandhian who was part of the nonviolent independence struggle against the British. Yet not only do I own guns, but I am also an evangelist for gun rights. How did that come to pass?

The gist of what I wrote in my book is that immigration, along with other factors, is a threat only if you let it be a threat. The core of my prescription for preserving and protecting the Second Amendment is outreach to groups that have historically not been associated with gun ownership, and included prominently in that are immigrants and new Americans.

If you want to save the Second Amendment, befriend an immigrant. Learn about his or her culture and introduce that person to a core part of American culture: the right to keep and bear arms. Take them to the gun range. Demystify guns. Point out all the lies from gun control groups that are parroted uncritically by the media.

Everyone on this continent is descended from immigrants who either walked across the Bering Strait or sailed across the Atlantic Ocean. A new arrival is in the same shoes your ancestors once were in. They will assimilate and become a part of the whole. 

It’s your job (and mine) to make sure that the assimilation process does not have a broken link in the chain with respect to gun ownership, because that will leave room for the weed of political ignorance to set root, and that’s where the danger really lies.

Pistol purchase permit repeal headed to North Carolina governor

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When SB 41 is delivered to Gov. Roy Cooper, he’s probably going to send it right back to the legislature, but the chances of a veto override appear to be pretty strong at the moment, at least if the bipartisan coalition that approved the bill sticks together.

SB 41 doesn’t just scrap the state’s pistol purchase permit system, which was put in place back in 1919. It also changes state law to allow licensed concealed carry holders to lawfully bear arms in churches and other religious services held in private or charter school settings. Cooper has vetoed similar bills in the past, but thanks to legislative victories last November Second Amendment supporters should have the votes to turn the bills into law over his objections.

The proposal would make it so sheriffs no longer have to perform evaluations of an applicant’s character and mental wellness before they can purchase a handgun. Supporters of the bill say the permit requirement has become duplicative in light of digitized mental health records and thorough updates to the national background check system. Rep. Jeff McNeely, an Iredell County Republican, said it would streamline the process for law-abiding gun buyers.

“It just allows everybody, every citizen in the state of North Carolina, to have their constitutional right granted to them so that they can protect their self,” McNeely said.

While people who buy from a gun store or a licensed dealer would still be subject to a national background check, Democrats raised alarms again Wednesday that background checks are not required for private exchanges between two individuals. Private sales only require buyers to obtain a sheriff-issued permit, or face a misdemeanor charge.

Rep. Pricey Harrison of Guilford County said the repeal would create a loophole that could enable dangerous individuals and those with mental health issues to more easily obtain weapons.

“The sheriffs know best back home who should and should not be carrying a pistol,” Harrison said during floor debate. “There’s so much more we could be doing about keeping our communities safe. But unleashing and letting access to guns to individuals who absolutely pose a danger to themselves and others is a real problem.”

Violent actors are not strolling in to their local sheriff’s office to apply for permission to purchase a handgun. They’re getting their guns through theft and the illicit market, or perhaps through a straw purchase involving someone who has obtained a permit-to-purchase.

At the same time, folks who want to stay inside the law are forced to satisfy the arbitrary and subjective concerns of their county sheriff before they can exercise a fundamental right. This law has been abused throughout its time on the books, and as Grassroots NC’s Paul Valone has pointed out, while the law may not have been explicitly racist in its language, in practice it has been used to deny many black North Carolinians access to their right to armed self-defense.

Following race riots in East St. Louis in 1917, both Missouri and North Carolina quickly passed handgun “permit to purchase” (P2P) laws. (3) Although North Carolina’s version has changed since passage in 1919, permits were originally issued by Clerks of Superior Court, who were required to satisfy themselves of the “good moral character” of the applicant – a measure which scholar Clayton Cramer suggests may have been “a euphemism to hide something that even in 1919 would have been an embarrassment…”

Cramer goes on to say, “…race has often been at the heart of gun control laws, and while there are no ‘smoking gun’ quotes with respect to P2P, there are some pieces of circumstantial evidence that suggest that the law was intended to be enforced in a racially discriminatory manner.”

Indeed, newspaper clippings from the era suggest about how the P2P law was enforced. Said a December 31, 1930 Durham Sun headline: “Pistol Permits Issued to Many: 450 Citizens Received Permission Since 1919; Mostly Whites” [emphasis added]. It goes on to explain, “A total of 450 permits to purchase pistols have been issued to Durham citizens since 1919, according to records kept in the office of clerk of superior court. Few permits were issued to Negroes, the records show, the issuance being restricted almost entirely to white persons [emphasis added].

An April 1, 1920 piece in the Rockingham Post-Dispatch – just months after the P2P law took effect – published the name and race of people who got permits, such as this one: “July 19 – Alex Wall, colored, age 46” [emphasis added]. Cramer found two clippings from Winston-Salem – one in which 14 of 15 defendants charged with carrying concealed weapons were described as “colored” and another in which 19 of 20 defendants are described as “colored.”

Supporters of the pistol purchase permit have alternately tried to argue that the law was never really a part of Jim Crow, or that if it was racially discriminatory in practice in the past that’s no longer the case today, but research has shown that in Wake County black applicants are still almost three times as likely to be denied a permit than white applicants. That might not be proof of racial discrimination, but it’s definitely cause for concern.

On paper, the votes to override Gov. Cooper’s expected veto are there, but there’ll be enormous pressure on the handful of Democratic lawmakers who supported SB 41 to reverse course and back Cooper’s veto during an override session. North Carolina’s gun owners have done a fantastic job of communicating with legislators and keeping up the pressure to support SB 41 so far, but there’s a little more work to be done before they can be assured of victory.

Senate holds hearing on gun control

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The Senate is now in the hands of Democrats. Completely.

As a result, that body can do all kinds of silly things, such as hold hearings on gun control, which is exactly what they did.

That’s when committee chair Sen. Dick Durbin said about the dumbest thing he could have.

The Senate Judiciary Committee heard from both sides of the gun control debate in a hearing to preserve public safety in light of the Supreme Court’s decision in New York State Rifle and Pistol Association v. Bruen. In that case, the court struck down a New York state law that made it difficult to obtain a concealed weapon permit.

Under Bruen, courts must consider the text of a law and the history of firearms regulation. Before Bruen, courts used a “history and means-end scrutiny” test to consider the law in light of Constitutional principles and the current issues and circumstances.

Committee Chair Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) said Bruen fails to take into account modern legal, social, and technological issues. The founders were only familiar with muzzle-loading rifles and could not have foreseen modern firearms, he said at the March 15 hearing.

“I don’t believe the founders of this nation would want this radical new framework,” Durbin said.

This is an old, tired talking point. “The Founders couldn’t have imagined anything but single-fire guns.”

Durbin’s comment ignores so much it’s almost hilarious.

First, the idea that failure to foresee new technology should change anything is bogus. We don’t accept that reasoning with regard to things like the internet. Sure, there were questions of how to handle things, but there was never any doubt that people were going to have free speech despite the new technology, which was well beyond what our Founders likely imagined.

We don’t ignore someone’s Fourth Amendment rights because it’s a cell phone and not their home, either.

Our rights don’t change simply because technology did.

As for our Founding Fathers not being able to picture modern firearms, that may be true but only as a matter of degree. The puckle gun showed that repeating firearms were certainly feasible and the Lewis and Clark expedition had a Girardoni air rifle that had a capacity of 30 rounds and was lethal to humans. Oh, and it was in service with the Austrian Army between 1780 and 1815 while the Second Amendment was ratified in 1791.

So yeah, I’m sure the modern AR-15 wouldn’t be that big of a leap for them.

Further, let’s also remember that the Second Amendment covered heavy artillery. If you had the money, you could outfit an entire warship at your own expense and there was literally nothing illegal about it. That’s enough firepower to destroy a small down back in the day, so don’t even try to claim that the Second Amendment covered less lethal weapons than what we have today.

I love my AR-15, but it doesn’t blow up buildings, contrary to what many seem to think.

The truth is, the Senate wants to see gun control passed and they’re ignorant, at best, of the history of firearms. They don’t realize that while the specifics may have changed, the broad strokes really haven’t.

So, they’ll have their hearings on gun control and pretend they’re doing something. If they get their way, they will actually do something.

They’ll step all over the Second Amendment, contrary to what they’ve deluded themselves to believe.

“Mission creep” in public health a Second Amendment issue

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If one were to read the text of the Second Amendment, and one should, there are things you would see and things you wouldn’t, just like any other part of the Constitution.

For example, you’d see that the amendment was intended, at least in part, for national defense. You’d also see the often ignored phrase “shall not be infringed.”

What you wouldn’t find, though, is any proclamation that all of that text should go out the window if bureaucrats and physicians decided it was in our best interests to ignore it.

Yet that’s what some people seemingly believe we should do, all in the name of “public health.”

I couldn’t help but think of that as I read this from a Substack called Ivy Exile. It’s titled “Mission Creep,” and it really does get into some interesting stuff.

My last job at Columbia, up to this past summer, was curating the School of Public Health’s centennial, leaning into Covid for fundraising and newsiness. Even after a decade tangentially covering any number of public health professors, I’d still been awfully vague on what the field actually entailed—it was all so slippery and amorphous that I had to dig back centuries to start making sense of things.

Dating to the 1700s and earlier the roots of public health had been the noblest of endeavors, doctors and engineers collaborating for smarter hygiene and infrastructure. Up through World War II the emerging discipline(s) was primarily empirical and logistical in nature, saving countless lives.

And then came so-called social scientists, initially enriching the conversation but by the late 1960s beginning to declare every fashionable cause a public health crisis for which they held the scientific solution. At first it was a utopian sideshow, but gradually overtook the field—STEM standards giving way to fuzzy sloganeering.

Which isn’t to say that there aren’t still a bunch of legit and semi-legit practitioners out there, but that their funding and cultural orientation have become predominantly political and almost religious, built atop an all-abiding faith in universal technocracy run by credentialed experts like them.

The intentions are heroic: harnessing boundless expertise to mastermind a sustainable global society protecting humanity from itself. Yet the reality remains more complicated—true-believing technocrats biting off more than they can chew, and neglecting core competencies for grandiose schemes often making things worse.

With the fizzling of swine flu and Ebola, and then especially the shocks of Brexit and Donald Trump, came ever greater appetite for whatever it took for what needed to be done. So the coming of COVID-19 was the chance of a lifetime, opportunity to unleash decades of pent-up ambition and not let the crisis go to waste. Unintended consequences didn’t matter—it was all about moving the ball forward, and any collateral damage would just provide more impetus for further action.

Except, it wasn’t just COVID-19.

As we return to normal following the pandemic, we find public health officials not just looking at the next disease they can capitalize on, but being more than willing to manufacture reasons various other ills fall within their wheelhouses.

Enter the Second Amendment.

Our inner cities are a wreck. Violent crime is a problem and likely always will be. I’m pretty sure we were never meant to be herded into such confines in such numbers.

Because of this violence, though, public health officials seem ready to take on the Second Amendment as it’s written. They claim we should essentially ignore the right to keep and bear arms, all in the name of public health.

Doctors take to social media and even more traditional media, extolling people to support gun control and providing their own perspective, that of treating gunshot victims. They never seem willing to understand that their own experiences have a certain bias–they see those shot, sometimes without any context, but don’t see those who defended themselves with a gun precisely because they were armed.

Public health officials argue that this is something they should be examining, citing out-of-context statistics, all in what sure looks to me like a grasp for more power and authority.

As concern over COVID disappears, it seems these officials are desperate for the next thing.

By deciding to take on the Second Amendment, they think they’ve found it.

Well, they picked the wrong damn fight.