What to do with the Second Amendment
According to Steven R. Singer, identified by The Connecticut Mirror as “a communications strategist and former congressional press secretary in Connecticut, and former director of communications and public affairs and adjunct lecturer at the Harvard Kennedy School,” there needs to be a campaign to repeal the Second Amendment. He believes that we are currently in a deadlock created by the protections of gun rights given by that bit of law and that any change requires some people to demand an extreme solution in order to get more moderate action done.
I am told on a regular basis that no one is coming to take my guns, as if I only care about my property and not about the rights of all and as if Beto O’Rourke were not merely one prominent politician to say that he would indeed take away many types of guns if elected. But here is someone who is not satisfied with “I believe in the Second Amendment, but….” Instead, Singer is willing to give an open call to remove gun rights from legal protection—and he says nothing about what, if any new national standard he would like enacted.
The concept that Singer is employing here, as cited in his essay, is the Overton Window, the band of options that seem reasonable in present political discourse out of the total spectrum of possibilities on any issue. His illustration of a successful use of this idea is the Affordable Care Act, arguing that supporters of Medicare for All have made Obama’s adoption of Republican healthcare acceptable.
It is true to say that there have been national healthcare plans under consideration to some degree in this country since the presidency of Teddy Roosevelt, but a system modeled on what Canada now enjoys was hardly a matter of popular discussion—other than as a Republican talking point of what surely no one wants—and was not seen as a threat to today’s for-profit method of delivery until Bernie Sanders made it a major part of his campaigns for president in recent years. And while a poll in April found a fifty-five percent favorable opinion of the ACA, forty-two percent still hold an unfavorable view, suggesting that if this is where the Overton Window has moved, its panes are in need of cleaning. And with thirty million Americans lacking health insurance—not even to say good healthcare, but just lacking insurance—the notion that stating what appears to be a radical position in order to achieve progress is a doubtful proposition.
Singer uses a number of the classic anti-rights rhetorical moves in his article. He tells us about his experience in his high school’s rifle team in 1974, which is a somewhat puffier version of “I have guns, too.” He claims that a campaign to repeal the Second Amendment would not mean that people who need guns—hunters, competitive shooters, and those in need of protection are his examples—would be unable to get them. But as I said above, he gives no recommendation on how those people would still be able to have firearms, nor does he explain how eligibility would be determined. Perhaps he would like a return to the situation in New York State in which Donald Trump could get a carry license, while ordinary New Yorkers were denied automatically. He certainly wants to see a time when “fewer police will be outgunned,” with no mention of the risks involved in having the people living under a de facto occupying army, and he would like to have fewer gun deaths.
Indeed. Any decent person would like fewer people to die by violence. I have suggested ways to achieve that, if he is interested, and my solutions do not involve curtailing anyone’s rights. But I get the impression that Singer has never spoken to anyone in the gun community. If he had at some time engaged in conversation with some of us—not a representative sample, but even just a tiny portion—he would have found out that we are aware of his schemes.
This is odd, given how he recognizes that any attempt at a gun control measure right now is viewed as an effort to remove gun rights. Does he really imagine that stating openly the part that is supposed to be kept in secret will convince us?
But all right, if he wants to advocate for a repeal of the Second Amendment, he should understand the procedure. He will need either a two-thirds vote in both houses of Congress or from two-thirds of state legislatures to propose an amendment that will then be submitted either back to the state legislatures or to a constitutional convention, at which time, three-fourths of the states will have to approve the bill for it to enter the Constitution—with the current fifty states, that would be thirty-eight needed to pass.
Support for more gun control as of November’s Gallup poll was at fifty-seven percent, but Singer should consider that a constitutional amendment is enacted along the lines of the votes by the electoral college. Support for gun rights by state is difficult to find, but it is worth noting that the Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence’s scorecard of state gun laws for 2021 comes up with only twenty-four receiving a passing grade of C- or better, and states like Florida and Virginia, despite their C- and B grades respectively, are unlikely to support a repeal of the Second Amendment. Also worth noting is the map of concealed carry laws by state, which prior to this summer’s Bruen decision had only eight states with a may-issue scheme, whereas twenty-four were listed as constitutional carry.
So by all means, Steve Singer, call for a repeal. Make an all-or-nothing stance the position of gun control groups. Be a loud voice for removing any basic protection of gun rights, and get all efforts at gun control identified with your demand.
If my opponents wish to make fools of themselves, I will do nothing to stop them—other than to suggest to this one in particular that he contemplate the amendment that gun-rights supporting states might come up with and might get passed.
Or perhaps he would prefer to work for those solutions that I linked to above.