Second Amendment

I give to you a reflection in two times eleventy-one words...

A well-regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.

Why did The Founding Fathers include the second amendment? To protect self-government. To give the United States of America, one of the boldest experiments in the history of the world, a chance to exist in a world that decried its very existence. And endure, the United States did, partially because of those arms. They served their purpose from the country’s revolution to its civil war.

The world has changed. First, technology has rendered the second amendment obsolete; the United States government has little trouble quelling its citizens’ armed efforts with superior weaponry. Second, and more importantly, self-government has become a habit in the United States, even if it remains undervalued by many of its citizens.

For these reasons, arms in the hands of the people no longer secure liberty; they merely escalate tensions, provoking violence and anger and fear.

We must now embrace alternate methods, those employed by Mandela and Gandhi and Menchú and King. We must meet violence with peace, anger with joy, fear with love. We must move to eradicate arms in the hands of the people, lest they aid in the destruction of the very ideal the second amendment was meant to protect.