The debate over the Second Amendment and gun control continue to roil America
In a Thursday piece after the Texas school shooting, Los Angeles Times opinion columnist Nicholas Goldberg tore into the Second Amendment and America’s Founding Fathers.
Goldberg started his piece voicing the frustration he and other liberals have with U.S. gun laws in the wake of the Buffalo, N.Y., and Uvalde, Texas shootings.
"Our gun laws are not just weak and insufficient. They are, to put it bluntly, suicidal. Yet year after year, we do little or nothing to change them," Goldberg declared, before adding yet another dig on the much-maligned offering of "thoughts and prayers."
"Instead we offer tears and prayers for the victims and then let the tragedies slip slowly from our minds as the days and weeks pass until the next nightmare inevitably occurs and the cycle begins again," he wrote.
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In the wake of the Texas school shooting, an L.A. Times column argues to repeal the Second Amendment (LPETTET)
Goldberg didn’t launch into a scathing rebuke of the NRA, the GOP nor the blood money much of the liberal media claim they share. He actually said that blaming these groups, though "all are partly to blame, no doubt," should not be the focus of liberal activism.
"Sometimes we explain our inaction by blaming the enormously powerful National Rifle Assn.… Or we blame the cynical, self-interested gun industry. Or unconscionable Republican obstinance. Or voter apathy, short attention spans and peripatetic news cycles," he continued.
"But one of the most serious obstacles to meaningful gun control laws dates back to the beginning of the republic," Goldberg stated, beginning his assault on the Second Amendment and the country’s founders.
He began by calling the Second Amendment "the historical bad luck that ties our hands," and wrote, "The founders of this country — those men in their powdered wigs, revered for their prescience and common sense — blindly and stupidly enshrined gun rights in the U.S. Constitution."
WASHINGTON, DC - MAY 24: A U.S. Secret Service officer lowers the American flag to half staff over the White House following the recent mass shooting at a Texas elementary school on May 24, 2022 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)
The author walked back that indictment somewhat but kept the same point. "Well, perhaps stupidly is the wrong word. They didn’t actually mean for the 2nd Amendment to be what it has become," he wrote.
He then clarified that the founders misjudged the future, probably. "The founders presumably couldn’t have foreseen a violence-prone society more than 200 years in the future flooded with assault rifles and automatic weapons and ubiquitous handguns. They couldn’t have predicted copy-cat killings, elementary school shootings, domestic terrorism or senseless, random homicide."
Despite giving them some benefit of the doubt, Goldberg still described the supposed mess the founders made. "The 2nd Amendment they left us with is a jumbled piece of work. Historians and scholars and judges have spent years battling over whether it was actually meant to confer on each individual American a right to ‘keep and bear arms’ that may not be abridged, or whether it was supposed to apply only in the context of the right to form self-defense militias."
The columnist then mentioned that the Supreme Court "seems ready to further expand gun rights in a case from New York involving the right to carry firearms outside the home" though "more than half of Americans support stricter gun laws. And even though the death toll is continuing to rise."
The L.A. Times column argued for amending the U.S. Constitution (Ardon Bar-Hama)
"In a politically healthy society, the obvious path to a solution would be to amend the Constitution," he said.
He later wrote, "If we could amend the Constitution, we could make it clear that 2nd Amendment rights are not absolute. Or that they do not preclude reasonable but effective restrictions. Or we could repeal the amendment altogether." Though he concluded his piece by admitting that seems impossible.
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"But history suggests we won’t and can’t, that we’ll be right back here again in a matter of days, weeks or months, offering our tears and prayers for the dead, and few real solutions."