Yes, the Second Amendment is outdated. Or, wait—I’m sorry—are there still militias marching about? This is the right to bear arms’ qualifier, correct? Here’s some of the historical context:

This amendment-turned-platitude was drafted into the Constitution purely so that slave owners could form militias and repel uprisings, so that southern white men could protect and maintain their lofty stands from the federal government, from slaves, from Native Americans, from foreign incursion; so that the settlers and newly-branded Americans could arm themselves in preparation for the wars and skirmishes with England and France and Spain and Mexico and Canada that all might occur on domestic soil (many of which did end up occurring); so that the country as a whole could arm itself against the kind of tyranny it’d so freshly escaped; so that frontiersmen could hunt for food, kill grizzly bears and wolves and wildcats and fight with native tribes and foreigners, not so that peppy yeomen could defend themselves and their buddies from machine-gun madmen and terrorists.

This was no conception of the founding fathers, no consideration made by our untouchably sacred Constitution, which systemically provided for the non-relevancy of women, and for the legalization of slavery and the oppression of anybody not white, not landed, not male—which has been amended 17 times, but apparently never again.       

What exactly is the pro-gun rights supporter’s ideal world?

A world in which every Ma and Pa holstered themselves and their of age children each morning before running along to work or school? So that in the event of a mass shooting, the banker or checker or student or clerk everyman could draw and fire against the perpetrator(s)? Surely, there would be no trouble in this?

If, on the occasion of a wild man pulling a gun and firing into a crowd, three-dozen others did the same and fired at these perpetrators—there wouldn’t be a mess of a crossfire; a mess of figuring out who the ‘bad guy’ is—who it is, exactly, all the ‘good guys’ are supposed to be shooting at when everybody else has got a gun; no mess of dead innocents and mayhem as every man and women with a firearm looks to their neighbor’s empty holster and swings round?  

Perhaps we should bring the gun manufacturers into the national bureaucracy’s fold? More so than they already are, that is. I see no real reason why the NRA shouldn’t just be another governmental agency. Perhaps they could issue pistols to every American upon their 18th birthday—surely, this would prevent violence on our city streets and in our city bars and our city schools. Let’s just give each and every soul a killing machine; This, this—surely—would finally put an end to all the killing.  

Yes, if only every college student, every barkeep, every passerby in this past Sunday morning’s crowd on Welch Avenue that was shot into would have had a pistol strapped to their thigh, then the situation would have been all the more improved. If, after, the perpetrators had taken their shots and sped away, a good 15 or so men and women would have pulled out a gun and looked to each other in confusion—then look where we might be. Look what might’ve been accomplished.

No—I must slow down. I speak crazily. I speak of exaggerations, of unfairly reached logical ends and enough! —say the pro-gun rights folk. Not everybody needs a gun. Only those who’ve been properly vetted, who’ve taken the proper tests; those among us who could be reasonable and responsible under pressure—those who really know what they’re doing.

But wait? does this not eerily sound like something we’ve already got? Something, perhaps, like the police force?

This is why we ought to strike the Second Amendment in its current state. Replace it with something more apropos. Our world is a changed one from 1787, and it deserves some changed legislation.

I do not call for the prohibition of guns (which is impossible) or even for particularly strict gun control law (just stricter than what we’ve already got). But what I do really call for—what’s desperately needed—is some actually meaningful, relevant, worthwhile, updated Constitutional language that clamps down on what is such a pathetically weak truism and argument: the “right” to bear arms. 

The above paragraph—earlier in the week having been my concluding thoughts—must now survive a few more addendums.

A bill has been proposed in the Iowa legislature which would provide for the legal carrying of firearms on campus grounds.

I need not restate so much of what I’ve already mentioned, but would merely remark that whatever supposed belief in efficacy there could exist (on the part of the bill’s supporters) for the handing over of such a dangerous right to a pack of green 18–22 year-olds is beyond delusional. This is an absolutely wild proposed solution to a very serious problem, and it deserves a more serious resolution. 

More guns simply aren’t the answer. They’ve never been the answer. There are more complex issues at the root of these violent symptoms, and to treat the symptoms alone with such a surface-level reaction would be a grave mistake. It may take some horrible tragedy for the nation to unite on this front, and for that I am truly sorry.