There are thousands of gun-related killings and deaths and hundreds of mass killings every year. There are nearly 400 million guns in the U.S., some 120 guns for every 100 Americans. Half of the privately-owned guns are owned by 3 percent of the population. Using their guns, whites have massacred Native Americans and stolen their land. They kidnapped Africans, shipped them as cargo, and then enslaved, lynched, imprisoned, and impoverished Black people for generations.
The Second Amendment has been misinterpreted to mean gun rights are absolute. They are NOT. Just as some speech can be curbed, so can gun ownership. If not limited, that would mean that anyone (even non-citizens since “citizens” are not expressly mentioned in the amendment) could own, for example, a cruise missile or a nuclear weapon in the U.S. Also, a major reason to create this amendment was to appease slave-owning states, which allowed slave owners to arm slave patrols.
The Hidden History of Guns and the Second Amendment
Suggestions:
1. We should thereby enact sensible gun regulations such as implementing thorough background checks, funding effective mental health screening and treatment, banning assault and military-style weapons, requiring liability insurance, funding CDC research on gun violence health impacts, improving gun-safety training, etc.
A modest proposal to address gun violence: Mandatory national no-fault insurance.
2. Call mass shooters, and those who inspire them, terrorists.
3. Give assault weapons and ammunition to every adult (women, minorities, legal immigrants, LGBTQI+, ministers, medical professionals, liberals, cashiers, the mentally ill, etc.)