Sure, so you start by getting 290 votes in the House. Those are the folks who needed 15 tries to get a simple 218 vote majority to decide who their own leader was.
Then you need 67 votes in the Senate, the folks who can’t get 60 to break a filibuster.
Then you need ratification from 38 states… In 2020, they split 50/50 for Biden vs. Trump, here’s the map:
Find 13 red states willing to give up their guns. Oh, wait, did I say 13? Yeah, 6 Biden states have Republican statehouses, so now you’re looking at needing as many as 19 Trump states to give up their guns.
Guns are a lot like a drug addiction. They feel good at first for fighting off the British, but eventually everyone gets one and starts shooting each other. Trying to take them away is like trying to get a needle from a heroin addict.
Politically it’s impossible because of the control money has in our elections. And even if they made all guns illegal overnight, you just sent 400 million firearms directly to the black market… bad things would happen.
The Constitution didn’t start out having the second Amendment. That’s why it’s an amendment. Because the Constitution was meant to be a living document that could be updated and changed with the times. The last time we amended the constitution was in the 90’s. We can do it. But bipartisan agreement is necessary and so in the near future it’s unlikely. But it was unlikely to overturn Roe v Wade when they started that nonsense and they managed it eventually. People who want to amend that amendment just have to recognize that it may not happen in their lifetime but they should still fight for it.
The first 10 Amemdments, called “The Bill of Rights”, were put in place to ensure the Constitution would get ratifified, without them the Constitution would have been written, but never ratified.
The 2nd Amendment in particular has a surprising (or unsurprising, depending on your perspective) racial component.
"It was in response to the concerns coming out of the Virginia ratification convention for the Constitution, led by Patrick Henry and George Mason, that a militia that was controlled solely by the federal government would not be there to protect the slave owners from a enslaved uprising. And it was the way that James Madison crafted that language in order to mollify the concerns coming out of Virginia and the anti-Federalists, that they would still have full control over their state militias. And those militias were used in order to quell slave revolts.
DAVIES: Right. So the fear was that a Union which was dominated by northern states would simply not see those militias for the same purposes the South did. They would take them for - you know, draft them for other purposes, like from a foreign invasion, and leave the job of guarding against the slave revolt unfilled. So in the end, what happens is the South agrees to join the Union. In - but part of it was that they had an assurance that their own militias would be seen as independent, used for their own purposes, i.e., suppressing slave revolts, right?
ANDERSON: Yes. Yes. In that, the Second Amendment really provided the cover, the assurances that Patrick Henry and George Mason needed that the militias would not be controlled by the federal government, but that they would be controlled by the states and at the beck and call of the states to be able to put down these uprisings."
Other countries don’t have a 2nd amendment.
So we remove that. Problem solved
Sure, so you start by getting 290 votes in the House. Those are the folks who needed 15 tries to get a simple 218 vote majority to decide who their own leader was.
Then you need 67 votes in the Senate, the folks who can’t get 60 to break a filibuster.
Then you need ratification from 38 states… In 2020, they split 50/50 for Biden vs. Trump, here’s the map:
Find 13 red states willing to give up their guns. Oh, wait, did I say 13? Yeah, 6 Biden states have Republican statehouses, so now you’re looking at needing as many as 19 Trump states to give up their guns.
Guns are a lot like a drug addiction. They feel good at first for fighting off the British, but eventually everyone gets one and starts shooting each other. Trying to take them away is like trying to get a needle from a heroin addict.
Politically it’s impossible because of the control money has in our elections. And even if they made all guns illegal overnight, you just sent 400 million firearms directly to the black market… bad things would happen.
Even if you made guns illegal overnight, there’s no feasible way to remove and destroy 400 million guns.
People love to say “Australia did it!” Australia only removed 650,000 guns, 20% of all privately owned guns.
https://www.vox.com/2015/8/27/9212725/australia-buyback
In order to have the same impact, the US would have to run the equivalent of the Australian program 123 times.
The Constitution didn’t start out having the second Amendment. That’s why it’s an amendment. Because the Constitution was meant to be a living document that could be updated and changed with the times. The last time we amended the constitution was in the 90’s. We can do it. But bipartisan agreement is necessary and so in the near future it’s unlikely. But it was unlikely to overturn Roe v Wade when they started that nonsense and they managed it eventually. People who want to amend that amendment just have to recognize that it may not happen in their lifetime but they should still fight for it.
The first 10 Amemdments, called “The Bill of Rights”, were put in place to ensure the Constitution would get ratifified, without them the Constitution would have been written, but never ratified.
The 2nd Amendment in particular has a surprising (or unsurprising, depending on your perspective) racial component.
https://www.npr.org/transcripts/1002107670
"It was in response to the concerns coming out of the Virginia ratification convention for the Constitution, led by Patrick Henry and George Mason, that a militia that was controlled solely by the federal government would not be there to protect the slave owners from a enslaved uprising. And it was the way that James Madison crafted that language in order to mollify the concerns coming out of Virginia and the anti-Federalists, that they would still have full control over their state militias. And those militias were used in order to quell slave revolts.
DAVIES: Right. So the fear was that a Union which was dominated by northern states would simply not see those militias for the same purposes the South did. They would take them for - you know, draft them for other purposes, like from a foreign invasion, and leave the job of guarding against the slave revolt unfilled. So in the end, what happens is the South agrees to join the Union. In - but part of it was that they had an assurance that their own militias would be seen as independent, used for their own purposes, i.e., suppressing slave revolts, right?
ANDERSON: Yes. Yes. In that, the Second Amendment really provided the cover, the assurances that Patrick Henry and George Mason needed that the militias would not be controlled by the federal government, but that they would be controlled by the states and at the beck and call of the states to be able to put down these uprisings."