It’s time to amend Second Amendment

To the Times: It is time for state and federal legislators to think boldly about a minor tweak to the Second Amendment. The right to public safety should be on equal footing as the right to own firearms. Five words could be added to the very end of the Second Amendment which would create that balance as proposed by Dartmouth Professor James Heffernan.

The added words are simply: “except to ensure public safety.” Thus, the end part of the Second Amendment could read “… the right of the people to keep and bear arms should not be infringed, except to ensure public safety.”

New common-sense laws could then be enacted much more easily.