Presumably we all can agree that concrete actions are needed to reduce gun violence in the United States.
To that end, considerable progress is possible within the confines of the 2nd amendment, even given the recent expansive interpretations of it by the Supreme Court, but it should be obvious that as long as we have the current 2nd amendment gun deaths in the United States will be higher than they would be otherwise.
We thus need to eliminate the 2nd, for three basic reasons: (1) it is incoherent, (2) it is predicated on a demonstrably false social assumption, and (3) it is fatally predicated on obsolete technological assumptions.
(1) It is incoherent, and thus provides a terrible basis for legal reasoning, making it far too open to whipsawing interpretive whims. The very sentence structure is unclear, and even the basic terms it uses are confusing, sometimes archaic, and open to wildly varying interpretations: “well-regulated”, “militia”, “security”, “arm”, “infringe”, etc. In fact, it is so incoherent that we must repeal it entirely, not merely patch it up with clarifications that would just add to the confusion.
(2) To the extent that it does make sense, it is predicated on a demonstrably false assumption: that an armed populace is necessary for safety and security. Dozens of other nations provide ample proof that this is nonsense. The overall sentence structure of the 2nd isn’t even clearly logical (as SCOTUS debates have shown), but to the extent that words in a law are expected to mean something and to be relevant to the topic under discussion, including such a blatantly false presumption dramatically weakens the legitimacy of that law.
(3) It is predicated on obsolete assumptions about technology. Most abstract notions in the Constitution extend in a relaltively straightforward way from the 18th century to the modern world: Freedom of the printing press extends in obvious ways to telephones, radios, tv, emails, etc. Protections afforded to people in their houses extend to cars, boats, planes, etc. Privacy of letters extends to tape recordings, videos, emails, etc. Such extensions are not always perfectly obvious (press to megaphone, house to airline seat, etc.), but close enough that reasonable people will generally agree on the appropriate interpretation in new contexts.
The technological notions of armed conflict do not extend in any comparable way. No one in their right mind would argue that the freedom to own a musket should extend to shoulder-fired nukes, rocket-propelled sarin gas canisters, etc. The danger of one misguided citizen with a musket would be bad, but arguably could be outweighed on average by the protections offered from sensible citizens carrying them. No comparable argument can be made to justify the danger posed by one misguided citizen with a thermonuclear arsenal. In that sense, we’ve already universally agreed that the 2nd is nonsense if taken literally, and are now merely haggling over the limits to its nonsense: nukes are out, muskets are in, automatic weapons are out, single-fire shotguns are in, bazookas are out, pistols are in, etc.
In the 18th century a case could be made for groups of citizens to be able to credibly counter the military power of the state, but that notion is now beyond ludicrous. Even a group of a million citizens armed with AR-15’s would be no credible match for a vastly smaller army equipped with tanks, drones, nukes, etc. In fact, there is essentially universal agreement that private citizen militias should NOT have abilities remotely comparable to a modern army.
In conclusion, some may argue that it is too soon and too provocative or counter-productive to make the radical suggestion of repealing the 2nd, but I would suggest that at least SOME people need to be making that argument, if for no other reason than to move the Overton window and thus facilitate progress on less extreme measures. And apparently I would have some distinguished company, with a noted scholar endorsing the third argument:
John Paul Stevens: Repeal the Second Amendment