You could stitch the words “shall not be infringed” to the end of the text enumerating any constitutional right, and it would not change the fact that none of these rights are absolute. Claiming that the Framers wrote “shall not be infringed” to affirm the right to keep and bear arms as an unregulated right is laughable. But Republicans created this mythic interpretation of the Constitution’s text, and have united the open-carry cult who fancy themselves to be the modern-day descendants of General Washington’s army, and the droves of wannabe militiamen who think the Constitution contains a cheat code that permits open rebellion against the U.S. government. This is a powerful falsehood that has begotten all of these “good guys with guns.” No one from the gun lobby or the Ivy League class of well-heeled Republican electeds actually believes this bullshit. …
[T]here are a great many federal legislative solutions that are supported by the vast majority of Americans, including gun owners. These include raising the minimum age for gun ownership, creating a national firearm registry to assist law enforcement in criminal investigations, mandatory background checks for would-be owners (and perhaps even annual background checks after gun purchases), regulation of certain kinds of deadly ammunition that only exists for the purpose of committing crimes, limits on magazine capacity, and red flag laws―irrefutable lifesavers—in all states.
Survivors of gun violence, and the bereaved who have buried their loved ones and friends, are among our most important gun safety activists. But the onus to forge change cannot fall solely on them. Millions of Americans just like myself—that is to say, “gun guys”—have a critical role to play in this fight. We’re the ones who can pierce the veil of illusion that the Second Amendment has become, and tear down the pernicious myths that have been allowed to flourish.
We can no longer deny that some within our culture celebrate violence and accept avoidable deaths; they are winning, at the moment, and will continue to win if more “good guys with guns” don’t step up to be good guys with ideas. I understand the ambivalence of speaking up. But with each mass shooting and every tragedy that can be traced back to a gun, we keep crossing and recrossing a basic demarcation of decency. If we erase this boundary, there will be no redemption. And the first step to modernizing our firearm policies is to mercy-kill the Republican Party at the polls, every chance we get.
In 1789, Thomas Jefferson wrote in a letter to Madison that the “earth belongs always to the living generation”; to his mind, every constitution should naturally expire at the end of 19 years. “If it be enforced longer,” Jefferson wrote, “it is an act of force, and not of right.” Much of what our Founders have provided has proven durable, but the Second Amendment is tethered to an epoch of America that has not existed for centuries. The living must demand that our gun laws reflect life in the twenty-first century and beyond—otherwise, we may not make it there alive.
