YES: It’s not sacred text — adapt to temper of the times

On Feb. 12, 2013, in the wake of the shocking slaughter of 20 children and six adults at the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., the editors of America magazine, the Catholic review of faith and culture, argued that the American people should repeal the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

At the time, this was seen as a wild, ill-considered proposal, out of touch with reality. Since 2013, however, a growing number of Americans have endorsed repeal, including John Paul Stevens, the retired associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court appointed by Republican President Gerald Ford, and Bret Stephens, the conservative columnist for The New York Times.

The rationale offered by America’s editors was straightforward and rooted in a conservative, originalist interpretation of the U.S. Constitution. It was not, then, as some commentators suggested, simply a knee-jerk, liberal reaction. The editors argued that the late Justice Antonin Scalia’s reading of the Second Amendment as prohibiting the comprehensive regulation of firearms was essentially correct. In light of that fact, if public-policy makers were going to have any real power to regulate gun ownership, then the Second Amendment would need to be repealed.

No citizen should casually propose amending the Bill of Rights — we should be wary of changing the nation’s fundamental law. But we should also be wary of idolizing it. The Bill of Rights belongs to a document that was meant to change, and the American people have changed the U.S. Constitution 27 times.

“A century ago,” the editors wrote, “leaders like Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson raised serious questions about the Constitution. Amendments soon followed, including provisions for a federal income tax, the direct election of U.S. senators, women’s suffrage and the prohibition of alcohol. The 21st Amendment, which repealed Prohibition, established the precedent for our proposal. Yet that kind of thoughtful, critical engagement with our fundamental law, the kind of spirited debate that characterized early 20th-century America, is not evident in contemporary American discourse.”

The Constitution is too often thought of as a kind of sacred text. It is good law, but it is not divine law. A self-governing people can and should reflect critically on their fundamental law and adapt its provisions to meet the temper of the times.

The argument is that the Second Amendment should stay because it provides the people a defense against tyranny and authoritarian government. That’s a fine idea in principle, and a useful one in the 18th century, but it’s fanciful in contemporary reality. In such a scenario, which is extremely unlikely, all of the civilian-owned firearms in this country would not be enough to match the firepower of the Department of Defense. It is also said that gun control doesn’t work. Yet it does: “Both Australia and Britain, for example, experienced gun massacres in 1996 and subsequently enacted stricter gun-control laws. Their murder rates dropped. Yet in the United States, the birthplace of pragmatism, our fundamental law proscribes practical, potentially lifesaving measures.”

Repealing the Second Amendment would give our representatives the power to ensure that the right people have access to guns and the wrong people don’t. Someone has to decide that. In a democracy, that decision should rest with our elected representatives, yet it is a power they currently lack. The result is measured in body counts.

Repeal does not require an absolute ban on gun ownership. In post-repeal America, some people would own guns, including hunters and law enforcement officials. But “the post-repeal world we envision,” wrote the editors, “is a world with far fewer guns, a world in which no one has a right to own one. Some people, though far fewer, will still die from gun violence. But the disturbing feeling that we have failed to do everything in our power to remove the material cause of their deaths, will no longer compound our grief.”

The Constitution is good law, but it is not divine law.