What if the 2nd Were Repealed?

A thought experiment.
As a legislator and I am always interested in people’s opinions. This is a thought experiment; a hypothetical. There are no right or wrong answers.

* What would you do if all of the requirements of Article V of the Constitution were met and the Second Amendment was repealed?
* What would you do if the Second Amendment was effectively repealed by a US Supreme Court ruling that the right to bear arms does apply to an individual, but only individuals in a militia?
* If the defense of the Second Amendment rests in reference to the Constitution as it stands now, what argument would you use if the Constitution was changed to no longer protect the individual right to bear arms?
* As a law abiding gun owner, would you give up your guns?
* What do you think would happen to violent crime rates, accidental shootings and suicides?
* Would you follow the new law of the land that was legitimately established, just as laws allowing the possession of a firearm have been legitimately established?

I care about the opinions of citizens of America; I would like thoughtful comments in the comment section about what law abiding gun owners would do if the Second Amendment were repealed or if the SCOTUS issued a new ruling reversing the Constitutionality of the individual right to bear arms.
You can read the answers at the link, but it might be better to give your own in the comments.

19 comments:

Ymar Sakar said...

What is this, some kind of fishing expedition...

Like that white house petition that just happened then leak all classified and unclassified contents of government databases soon afterwards...

MikeD said...

They present two different scenarios. And those have two different answers.

1) The burdens of Article V are met and a Constitutional Amendment is passed repealing the Second Amendment. Well, first off, this is a stupid idea and literally contrary to the entire purpose of the Bill of Rights (to guarantee those freedoms that the Founders considered to be beyond the reach of government to grant or repeal. That said, if 3/4 of the States and Congress were to pass such an Amendment, then that is in fact the right way for the anti-gun folks to do things. I would abide by that.

2) "What would you do if the Second Amendment was effectively repealed by a US Supreme Court ruling that the right to bear arms does apply to an individual, but only individuals in a militia?" This would be illegitimate and would likely lead to civil war. There is a vast and unbridgeable gulf between what is the will of 3/4 of the States and Congress and the will of five individuals sitting in an Appellate Court. Mark my words, if you want blood in the streets, let the SCOTUS gut the second Amendment and make it so there is no individual right to bear arms.

As for the other questions, it depends on which of those two scenarios "repealed" the Second.

"If the defense of the Second Amendment rests in reference to the Constitution as it stands now, what argument would you use if the Constitution was changed to no longer protect the individual right to bear arms?"
If the Constitution was changed through the Article V process, then I wouldn't use an argument to defend the bearing of arms. I may be seriously tempted to flee the country, because that nation that passed an Amendment crafted to specifically strip inalienable rights from its citizens has become a tyranny, but having done it through legal means, that shows me that tyranny to me is will of the super-majority for the rest of the country, and that's how you know it's time to flee.
But if the SCOTUS unilaterally changed the meaning of the Second Amendment, then my first concern would be to get my family to somewhere safe, because war is soon to follow. The argument I would use following that is that the federal government has crossed the line into the territory that the Founders laid out with the sentence "When in the course of human events..."

"As a law abiding gun owner, would you give up your guns?"
In the first scenario, assuming I am unable to take my property with me as I leave the country, then yes. I would obey the law and turn them over (and then leave). In the second scenario... HAHAHAHHAHAAHAHAHA! Yeah, I'm going to just roll over and show my belly to tyrants (and let them take my sole means of defense? Shall I just put the bullet into the back of my own skull while we're at it (you know, so as to save my family the bill for the expended ammunition like the Soviets used to send)? No. Cold dead hands applies in that case.

MikeD said...

What do you think would happen to violent crime rates, accidental shootings and suicides?
In either scenario, I'm tempted to say "I don't care" because those are no longer my pressing concerns. But as a thought experiment, violent crime rates (including gun crimes) rise dramatically as criminals are given the green light that they will no longer faced armed opposition ("God created man, Sam Colt made them Equal"), accidental shootings go down (hooray, I guess?) and suicide attempts see a slight temporary dip followed by eventually going back to previous levels. Successful suicides go down a little. But again, all of this is set against a backdrop of increasing violent crime and overwhelmed police. If we're talking the second scenario specifically though, I don't think the crime will become an issue, you know... except for that whole armed rebellion thing. Deaths will skyrocket, and ultimately, the anti-gun forces will lose resulting in a government MUCH less tolerant and understanding of liberal policy. In fact, my worry following such war becomes swinging the pendulum too hard in the opposite direction, but that's a concern for another day.

"Would you follow the new law of the land that was legitimately established, just as laws allowing the possession of a firearm have been legitimately established?"
As previously stated, only in scenario one is the Second Amendment legitimately repealed. And in said scenario, I'm leaving anyway (see: "the super-majority is okey-dokey with tyranny, time to go"). In the second scenario, the inalienable Right that the Founders said could never be taken away is illegitimately restricted by the will of five unelected judges. It's war.

raven said...

No law, Congress of people, Judge, individual or any other force has the Right to deny me the ability to defend my life from aggression. None.

That is what is meant by "inviolable".

DLSly said...

I'm sorry, but I can't participate in a thought experiment when I can't even read through the idea that the author has posited. I find it hard to believe that this was written by a legislator given the number of grammatical errors I came across in the small introduction and first two rhetoricals alone. (There are four in the three sentence introduction alone!)
After those glaring errors, I didn't/couldn't read any farther.

Grim said...

I don't, myself, find it hard to imagine that a legislator lacks basic mental capacities.

Ymar Sakar said...

Secretaries were supposed to write mails, reply to mails, and pretend to talk for legislators with the aide of teleprompters and ghost writers.

With twitter and facebook, perhaps some legislators think they don't need that any more.

DLSly said...

"I don't, myself, find it hard to imagine that a legislator lacks basic mental capacities."

*snort*😈

Eric Blair said...

Actually, if the original idea, that the constitution was lawfully amended, *that* would imply that two thirds of the states had voted to ratify the amendment.

Sort of like prohibition--by the time it passed, pretty much everybody was for it.

But the thought experiment fails, really, because the scale of the gun confiscation would be something that no govermental agency could cope with.

I don't see how it could be done in any sort of way.

Grim said...

Prohibition didn't work either.

I liked the answer at the link, though: these are inalienable rights. If the Constitution were changed so as no longer to defend them, so much the worse for the Constitution. Its legitimacy is not formal, but based on its effective defense of natural rights.

Tom said...

I may be seriously tempted to flee the country, because that nation that passed an Amendment crafted to specifically strip inalienable rights from its citizens has become a tyranny

Where are you going to go? I don't know of any other nations that consider the right to keep and bear arms an inalienable right. They are all tyrannies.

Grim said...

That's a real problem. Maybe it's the problem.

raven said...

Some of the eastern European counties might be OK- The Czech republic in particular- My FIL Div. organized a visit in the 90's, and got a warm welcome- they had engaged in the last action of WW2 in the ET, freeing a town from the Germans.

"I don't, myself, find it hard to imagine that a legislator lacks basic mental capacities."
If he had an island, it might tip over.

Assistant Village Idiot said...

Prohibition was stupid, but it was eventually repealed.

I have always thought that the strongest argument against gun-control laws was that they don't work. To read at the link the absolute certainty that people have that their understanding of both Constitutional Law and Natural Law is the only possible correct one is deeply troubling. That level of 100%-0% thinking is nearly always wrong. The Founding Fathers were not unanimous in their beliefs about anything, and the Constitution was the artful inspired compromise they hammered out. I believe we are bound by that unless modified, all doing the best we can to understand and negotiate.

But it's not scripture. It's an arrangement we live by.

Tom said...

There are lots of good places to live. I loved Asia myself. But none of them that I am aware of consider the right to keep and bear arms a civil right. You usually need a license for each firearm, and if you are not approved for a license, too bad. Carrying for self-defense is out of the question.

Tom said...

I believe we are bound by that unless modified ...

But it has been radically modified. Under FDR, the USSC gave itself the power to rewrite any passage of the Constitution that 5 of them agreed to change in any way they saw fit. The commerce clause and more than a century of precedent disappeared overnight. The states, and their citizens, immediately lost a great deal of economic freedom. That is the legal basis for the War on Drugs and all sorts of federal control over what were rightfully state matters. We no longer live under anything that resembles what the Founders founded.

MikeD said...

Where are you going to go? I don't know of any other nations that consider the right to keep and bear arms an inalienable right. They are all tyrannies.

Honestly, that's a good question. But again, not my primary concern if what happens in this thought experiment comes to pass. Let's change the ox being gored and see if I can put it into clearer terms. Let us say that for whatever reason, 2/3rds (thank you for the correction, I don't recall why I thought it was 3/4) of the States and Congress pass an Amendment allowing the federal government to round up Jews and put them in camps. Ridiculous, sure, but bear with me. If such a thing is likely to pass, and you are Jewish, is your first priority to get out of the country, or worry about where you're going to go? What you absolutely SHOULD NOT do is hang around to see if "they're really going to go through with it". You get the hell out.

I absolutely do not blame the victims of the Holocaust for what happened to them. But after Krystalnacht, there is no way in hell I'd have stayed in Germany. Even if it meant giving up all my worldly possessions to do so. And I would have been tempted to leave well before that. I would see the passing of an Amendment repealing the Second in much the same light.

Grim said...

...I don't recall why I thought it was 3/4...

You were probably thinking of the state-only amendment process, in which 2/3rds must call for a convention, but 3/4ths have to ratify any amendments that come out of it.

Tom said...

Well, before our hypothetical Jews fled Germany, they might have wanted to check to see if any of the countries they were considering were also rounding up Jews and putting them in camps. Why flee to Poland if you're just going to suffer the same fate?

Same thing here. If you leave a country because it doesn't recognize your right to keep and bears arms, why would you go to a country that also doesn't recognize that right? Spending a few weeks doing a little research would be well worth one's time.

In the end, though, if no nation recognizes that right, what do you do? If you hope to achieve peaceful change and get the government to recognize that right, then you've handicapped yourself. You're much more influential here than in some new country where you are not a citizen and don't know anyone, and especially so if you don't know the language.