It’s time to repeal the Second Amendment

THE SECOND Amendment should be repealed. It is a barrier to any rational, effective restraint on the surge of lethal firearms and mass killing in this country. It is outdated, a vestige of slavery.

The Second Amendment is among the compromises in the Constitution intended to placate the Southern slave states’ fear that the new federal government would abolish slavery: any bans on the slave trade are prohibited until after 1808; the tax levied on each imported slave is capped at 10 dollars; and there is the three-fifths compromise to resolve the slave states’ desire that their slave population — as high as 40 percent — be fully counted for the purpose of congressional representation, although those people were considered property with absolutely no representation or any rights whatsoever.

The slave states were concerned that Congress, under its power to regulate state militias as expressed in the proposed Constitution, would use that power to imperil slavery through disarming or neutralizing the state militias. One of the leading functions of militias in the South was to suppress slave rebellions, capture runaway slaves and otherwise intimidate the slave population.

To persuade those states to ratify the new Constitution, among the provisions of the Bill of Rights was the Second Amendment — that under its power to regulate the militias, Congress could not disarm them.

Let’s be clear that the Second Amendment is not a commandment — it is a political accommodation of 1789 that has become a relic. Slavery is no more. Militias have evolved into the National Guard.

The Second Amendment no longer serves any purpose. It is time to abolish it, to prepare for the time when our society matures and sufficient political will develops to halt the scourge of mass shootings and killing.

JURIS ODINS

Silver City