America: Violent Culture And The 2nd Amendment

It has been said that while serving abroad as the United States Minister to France, Thomas Jefferson had shipped over five-hundred letters and books referencing democracy to members of the burgeoning American government leading up to the adoption of the new constitution. He had been inspired by the historic roles that Greece and the early Roman Republic had played in the conceptualization and development of the idea itself: Democracy - greek - demos (whole citizen), and kratos (power/rule) - a fundamental belief in shared power.

A shared power of represented citizens that was to become the first long-standing democracy since the early Roman Republic (509 B.C - 27 B.C, at which point it then became an Empire under Emperor rule). This is to say in no uncertain terms, that the attempt at American democracy had been the first of its kind at that point in nearly two-thousand years, in a world of superpowers, provinces, territories and prefectures run exclusively by monarchal dynasties. We would have effectively been on our own but for our developing common wealth in trade, the trade of slaves and tobacco in particular, during a time when even Great Britain had long-since begun the process of banning the slave trade, leading up to the full abolition of their slave trade across the Americas in 1804.

We were a ‘democracy’, if one can even truly call it that, of pro-slavery enthusiasts, and one of great expansion westward; an expansion that gave rise to gun making and sales to everyday citizens the likes of which had never been seen before, with a singular goal in mind, to conquer the west and all indigenous peoples by any means necessary. In essence, paving the bloody road to consolidated white superiority and dominion over black and brown lives from sea to sea, a feat that in no way shape or form could have been done without gun power, mass murder, and the very real tearing apart of lives.

Now here we are, in a land rife with more ‘registered’ guns than living people as a result - a land with citizens more numb and accepting of gun violence like no other developed nation in the world, and with no end in sight to the continued devastation and carnage resulting from remarkably inadequate regulations. The acceptance of gun violence has become our ‘normal’, yet we have the power bestowed by the framers to amend amendments, a thing of which they invariably have encouraged us to do, and would likely call into question our very own sanity and ability to reason in this age, if they were witnessing the deplorable conditions that continue to make violent gun rampages so widespread today. 

Not one of the framers ever mentioned that amendments should never be amended. Not one. None. That is a fallacy created by those in the position to have reaped reward and gain by seizing upon the fears of those unwilling to think for themselves. Amendment by definition is: “a minor change or addition designed to improve a text or piece of legislation - something which is added to soil to improve its texture or fertility” By its very definition it embodies continual growth, development and change, and were designed as such as a template, not an end all be all, for the advancement and betterment of our nation.

To not see this is your own doing, blinded by a passion not even supported by the nation’s founders, but instead by latter day hijackers of the document to suit their own needs, no matter how many children die in our schools, or their parents in shopping plaza parking lots, or our fellow workmates just punching in for a shift. The founders wanted us to be better, and to update amendments accordingly as we have in many instances since their first constitutional summits following the war of independence.

We have passed an additional twenty-seven amendments to the constitution since 1791. Should we not have amended slavery and allowed it to this very day? Should we not have changed the original Articles of Confederation at all and left ourselves subject to the rigidity of its confines? Certainly not, as the framers believed as well - reason being, they were keenly aware of a creed they referred to as the, “lessons of experience.” They meant for us to live by this creed as well.

We are long overdue for amending the second amendment, even the constitutional framers would agree, going as far as ensuring a mechanism was in place to do so within the sacred document itself, lest we continue the disparaging egoic hands-off legacy of corrupting the very meaning of the word ‘amendment’ to reflect the worst of us, at the tragic expense of all of our lives, one murder spree after the next every other week in America, the most violent nation in the developed world.