I’ve carried a firearm for years. Repeal the Second Amendment.

I have carried a concealed firearm for years, everywhere I go, except where prohibited by law or a business’s policy.

Hanging in my office is a 100% American-made Gadsden flag.

For years, I voted for Republicans, including twice for former president Donald Trump, and once for Gov. Ron DeSantis (in 2018).

And I’m here to tell you that the Second Amendment needs to be repealed and replaced, because it has nearly zero modern-day applicability.

Many of the Floridians I once congregated with truly believe there is an ongoing “leftist” conspiracy to confiscate their firearms. “Molon Labé!,” we pronounced! The inevitable permitless carry that will soon become Florida law will be enacted to propitiate these same Republicans, who think God granted an absolute right to carry a firearm, but overlooked slavery and gender discrimination, among other actual tyrannies. To quote the late George Carlin: Doesn’t sound like divine planning to me.

Permitless carry makes communities more dangerous. Period. The Florida Republican Party, and DeSantis, know this. Why else has the state GOP consistently criminalized civilian carrying of firearms during any legislative, or committee, meeting and banned guns from election victory parties?

The Second Amendment was a compromise of James Madison’s. Likely its most important goal was to prevent the federal government from starting a professional army. This was relevant to our Southern states, where slave populations were disproportionately higher than other states’. Militias controlled states’ security, especially because of concerns over slave revolts. There was a fear amongst some of the Founders that the Haitian Revolution — the first-known successful uprising in the Americas of slaves against their masters — would inspire U.S. slaves to revolt. The Second Amendment assuaged these worries. Side note: Blacks were overwhelmingly prohibited from keeping and bearing arms.

An individual right to firearm ownership was affirmed by the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2008 District of Columbia v.

Heller decision. And last year, the Court struck down a New York state requirement that people show “good cause” to receive a gun permit. I agreed with the court’s decision in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen, but Bruen’s history-based tests are resulting in unimaginable regressions of commonsense public safety laws, as well as rollbacks of statutes protecting victims of domestic violence.

I carry a firearm for protection. Although data on defensive gun use is unclear — no thanks to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention under the Biden administration, which bowed to pressure from gun control advocates and removed studies on defensive gun use from its website — it’s impossible that it doesn’t happen on a daily basis, given that Americans own 400 million (or more) guns, and several trillion rounds of ammunition. Repealing the Second is, perhaps, unrealistically ambitious. The more repeal is mainstreamed, however, the more meaningful gun safety legislation will come to fruition.

Here are legislative solutions that are supported by the vast majority of Floridians (and Americans), including gun owners:

„ ■ Age 21 to own any gun, with some exceptions for law enforcement, military service and bequeathing; inheritance exemptions will only cover certain types of low-powered guns.

„ ■ National firearm registry, to assist law enforcement in criminal investigations; included here are inheritors.

„ ■ Codify mandatory record-keeping and reporting of prohibited persons, and the mentally ill, by all states, to federal databases.

„ ■ Background checks for all firearm sales performed by federally licensed dealers.

„ ■ Background checks on all ammunition.

„ ■ Annual Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) background checks for all firearm owners (including inheritors), with reasonably allowed grace periods for failure to comply; dealers could conduct these checks;

„ ■ Reclassification of any firearm that holds 10 or more rounds in a magazine; any firearm holding 10 or more will be levied an excise tax (a tax at the time of manufacture, not time of sale); funds collected from excise taxes to be used for a variety of initiatives, such as gun violence studies and research and federally administered liability insurance.

„ ■ Enshrinement of compulsory concealed carry permitting (but not “good cause”); prohibition of open carry.

„ ■ A federal buyback program, offering to buy firearms for the same price as purchased.

„ ■ Red flag laws — irrefutable lifesavers — in all states.

None of these are infringements.

In 1789, Thomas Jefferson wrote to Madison that the “earth belongs always to the living generation.”

The Second Amendment belongs to an epoch of America that has not existed for centuries. The living must demand its repeal.