{"id":86050,"date":"2022-09-27T19:54:33","date_gmt":"2022-09-28T00:54:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/?p=86050"},"modified":"2022-09-27T19:54:33","modified_gmt":"2022-09-28T00:54:33","slug":"86050","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/?p=86050","title":{"rendered":""},"content":{"rendered":"

An Open Rant Aimed at Those Who Would Repeal the Second Amendment<\/a><\/p>\n

Talk is cheap, but persuading Americans to surrender their rights will be expensive, difficult, and time-consuming.<\/div>\n
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Editor\u2019s Note: We are re-posting this 2015 piece by\u00a0<\/em>NRO\u00a0editor Charles C. W. Cooke in light of retired Supreme Court justice John Paul Stevens\u2019s\u00a0call to repeal the Second Amendment<\/a>.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

A <\/span>few hours after yesterday\u2019s shooting hit the news, the comedian Rob Delaney penned this tweet:<\/p>\n

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The\u00a0@NRA<\/a> & the politicians they own must not know this T. Jefferson quote. The 2nd Amendment is a ******* BOY\u2019S COAT. pic.twitter.com\/cKR0Nk4Uwm<\/a><\/p>\n

\u2014 rob Delaney (@robdelaney)\u00a0August 26, 2015<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

For ease of viewing, here is that Jefferson quotation\u00a0in full<\/a>\u00a0(it\u2019s adapted from a July 12, 1816, letter to Samuel Kercheval):<\/p>\n

I am not an advocate for frequent changes in laws and constitutions, but laws and institutions must go hand in hand with the progress of the human mind.<\/p>\n

As that becomes more developed, more enlightened, as new discoveries are made, new truths discovered and manners and opinions change, with the change of circumstances, institutions must advance also to keep pace with the times.<\/p>\n

We might as well require a man to wear still the coat which fitted him when a boy as civilized society to remain ever under the regimen of their barbarous ancestors.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

We should be absolutely clear about what Delaney is arguing here: He is a) agreeing with Jefferson that \u201claws and institutions must go hand in hand with the progress of the human mind,\u201d b) contending that \u201cprogress\u201d suggests that the individual right to keep and bear arms is now counterproductive, and c) concluding that it is time therefore to make a \u201cchange in law and constitution\u201d \u2014 in other words, to\u00a0repeal the Second Amendment. This, it is true, is not a mainstream position on the American Left \u2014 at least, it is not one that is argued openly.<\/p>\n

But it\u00a0is<\/em> a reasonably popular one on social media, it has strong support<\/a>\u00a0 \u00a0within\u00a0the\u00a0more\u00a0leftward-leaning parts of the\u00a0political commentariat<\/a>, it is often implied by the casual manner in which progressives such as President Obama refer to \u201cAustralia\u201d and other heavily regulated nations, and it enjoys indirect approval from around\u00a0one quarter<\/a>\u00a0of the American public. When the likes of Rob Delaney and\u00a0Bill Maher<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Keith Ellison<\/a>\u00a0say that we need to get rid of the Second Amendment, they are not speaking in a vacuum but reflecting the views of a small but vocal portion of the American population. And they mean it.<\/p>\n

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That being so, here\u2019s the million-dollar question: What the hell<\/em>\u00a0are they waiting for? Go on, chaps. Bloody well\u00a0do it<\/em>.<\/div>\n
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Seriously, try it. Start the process. Stop whining about it on Twitter, and on HBO, and at the\u00a0Daily Kos<\/em>. Stop playing with some Thomas Jefferson quote you found on Google. Stop jumping on the news cycle and watching the retweets and viral shares rack up. Go out there and begin the movement in earnest. Don\u2019t fall back on excuses. Don\u2019t play cheap\u00a0motte-and-bailey games<\/a>. And don\u2019t pretend that you\u2019re okay with the Second Amendment in theory, but you\u2019re just appalled by the\u00a0Heller<\/em>\u00a0decision. You\u2019re not.\u00a0Heller<\/em> recognized what was obvious to the amendment\u2019s drafters, to the people who debated it, and to the jurists of their era and beyond: That \u201cright of the people\u201d means \u201cright of the people,\u201d as it does everywhere else in both the Bill of Rights and in the common law that preceded it. A Second Amendment without the supposedly pernicious Heller<\/em>\u00a0\u201cinterpretation\u201d wouldn\u2019t be any impediment to regulation at all. It would be a dead letter. It would be an effective repeal. It would be the end of the right itself. In other words, it would be\u00a0exactly what you want<\/em>! Man up. Put together a plan, and take those words out of the Constitution.<\/p>\n

It\u2019ll be tough explaining to suburban families that their established conception of American liberty is wrong. You might even suffer at the polls because of it. But that\u2019s what it\u2019s going to take.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This will involve hard work, of course. You can\u2019t just sit online and preen to those who already agree with you. No siree. Instead, you\u2019ll have to go around the states \u2014 traveling and preaching until the soles of your shoes are thin as paper. You\u2019ll have to lobby Congress, over and over and over again. You\u2019ll have to make ads and shake hands and twist arms and cut deals and suffer all the slings and arrows that will be thrown in your direction.<\/p>\n

You\u2019ll have to tell anybody who will listen to you that they need to support you; that if they disagree, they\u2019re childish and beholden to the \u201cgun lobby\u201d; that they don\u2019t care enough about children; that their reverence for the Founders is mistaken; that they have blood on their goddamn hands; that they want to own firearms only because their penises are small and they\u2019re not \u201creal men.\u201d And remember, you can\u2019t half-ass it this time. You\u2019re not going out there to tell these people that you want \u201creform\u201d or that \u201cenough is enough.\u201d<\/p>\n

You\u2019re going there to solicit their support for\u00a0removing one of the articles within the Bill of Rights<\/em>. Make no mistake: It\u2019ll be unpleasant strolling into Pittsburgh or Youngstown or Pueblo and telling blue-collar Democrat after blue-collar Democrat that he only has his guns because he\u2019s not as well endowed as he\u2019d like to be. It\u2019ll be tough explaining to suburban families that their established conception of American liberty is wrong. You might even suffer at the polls because of it. But that\u2019s what it\u2019s going to take. So do it. Start now. Off you go.<\/p>\n

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And don\u2019t stop there. No, no. There\u2019ll still be a lot<\/em>\u00a0of work to be done. As anybody with a passing understanding of America\u2019s constitutional system knows, repealing the Second Amendment won\u2019t in and of itself lead to the end of gun ownership in America. Rather, it will merely free up the federal government to regulate the area, should it wish to do so. Next, you\u2019ll need to craft the laws that bring about change \u2014 think of them as modern Volstead Acts \u2014 and you\u2019ll need to get them past the opposition. And, if the federal government doesn\u2019t immediately go the whole hog, you\u2019ll need to replicate your efforts in the states, too, 45 of which have their own\u00a0constitutional protections<\/a>.<\/div>\n
Maybe New Jersey and California will go quietly.\u00a0Maybe<\/em>. But Idaho won\u2019t. Louisiana won\u2019t. Kentucky won\u2019t. Maine won\u2019t. You\u2019ll need to persuade those sovereignties not to sue and drag their heels, but to do what\u2019s right as defined by you. Unfortunately, that won\u2019t involve vague talk of holding \u201cnational conversations\u201d and \u201cdoing something\u201d and \u201cfighting back against the NRA.\u201d It\u2019ll mean going to all sorts of groups \u2014 unions, churches, PTAs, political meetings, bowling leagues \u2014 and telling them not that you want \u201ccommon-sense reforms,\u201d but that you\u00a0want their guns<\/em>, as in Australia or Britain or Japan. Obviously, the Republicans aren\u2019t going to help in this, so you\u2019ll need to commandeer the Democratic party to do it. That means you\u2019ll need their presidential candidates on board. That means you\u2019ll need to make full abolition the stated policy of the Senate and House caucuses. That means you\u2019ll need the state parties to sign pledges promising not to back away if it gets tough. And if they won\u2019t, you\u2019ll need to start a third party and accept all that that entails.<\/div>\n
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And when you\u2019ve done all that and your vision is inked onto parchment, you\u2019ll need to enforce it. No, not in the namby-pamby, eh-we-don\u2019t-really-want-to-fund-it way that Prohibition was enforced. I mean enforce it<\/em>\u00a0\u2014 with\u00a0force<\/em>. When Australia took its decision to Do Something, the Australian citizenry owned between 2 and 3 million guns. Despite the compliance of the people and the lack of an entrenched gun culture, the government got maybe\u00a0three-quarters of a million of them<\/a>\u00a0\u2014 somewhere between a fifth and a third of the total. That wouldn\u2019t be good enough here, of course.<\/div>\n
There are around 350 million privately owned guns in America, which means that if you picked up one in three, you\u2019d only be\u00a0returning the stock to where it was in 1994<\/a>. Does that sound difficult? Sure! After all, this is a country of 330 million people spread out across 3.8 million square miles, and if we know one thing about the American people, it\u2019s that they do not go quietly into the night. But the government has to have their guns. It\u00a0has<\/em>\u00a0to. The Second Amendment has to go.<\/div>\n
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You\u2019re going to need a plan. A state-by-state, county-by-county, street-by-street, door-to-door plan. A detailed roadmap to abolition that involves the military and the police and a whole host of informants \u2014 and, probably, a hell of a lot of blood, too. Sure, the ACLU won\u2019t like it, especially when you start going around poorer neighborhoods. Sure, there are probably between 20 and 30 million Americans who would rather fight a civil war than let you into their houses. Sure, there is no historical precedent in America for the mass confiscation of a commonly owned item \u2014 let alone one that was until recently constitutionally protected. Sure, it\u2019s slightly odd that you think that we can\u2019t deport 11 million people but we can search 123 million homes. But that\u2019s just the price we have to pay. Times have changed. It has to be done: For the children; for America; for the future. Hey hey, ho ho, the Second Amendment has to go. Let\u2019s do this thing.<\/p>\n

When do you get started?<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

An Open Rant Aimed at Those Who Would Repeal the Second Amendment Talk is cheap, but persuading Americans to surrender their rights will be expensive, difficult, and time-consuming. Editor\u2019s Note: We are re-posting this 2015 piece by\u00a0NRO\u00a0editor Charles C. W. Cooke in light of retired Supreme Court justice John Paul Stevens\u2019s\u00a0call to repeal the Second … Continue reading “”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-86050","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-enemies-foreign-domestic","category-rkba"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86050","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=86050"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86050\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":86051,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86050\/revisions\/86051"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=86050"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=86050"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=86050"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}