Somebody needs to explain to Bret Stephens how the Constitution works.
On Thursday, the New York Times published a thermonuclear-level hot take on the Second Amendment, standing out on a day full of blazingly hot takes from both sides of the gun control debate. In his widely discussed op-ed, Bret Stephens displays a level of ignorance about the U.S. Constitution that defies all reason and common sense. While Mr. Stephens’ resume displays an impressive amount of time writing about foreign affairs, in his latest entry at the New York Times he reveals himself to be utterly clueless about the facts around the discussion he decided to weigh in on.
Referring to the wording of the Second Amendment as “quaint” and respect for the Bill of Rights as a “conservative fetish,” Stephens clearly has little intention of arguing his case well or in good faith.
Unlike many reactionaries who have demanded for the repeal of the Second Amendment, Stephens admits that many of the liberal talking points around gun control are simply not factually based. He evens goes so far as to admit that what supporters of the Second Amendment frequently say is completely true: legal gun owners are not the ones committing the crimes.
Yet, in the same breath, he goes on to double down on his “feelings over facts” narrative. He insists that the only way to stop gun violence is by a complete and total repeal of the Second Amendment. That’s right, even though he admits that all of the common arguments for gun control laws have no factual basis, he still insists that the only solution to the problem of gun violence is to repeal a part of the Bill of Rights.
Now, this is the United States of America and everyone is guaranteed to have the freedom to believe in whatever they want, regardless of how amazingly ignorant their position is. Flat Earthers can deny basic science and Bret Stephens can pretend that his logical fallacies make him an intellectual. However, the facts still remain that the Earth is not flat and is literally not possible to repeal the Second Amendment.
In fact, you simply cannot repeal any of the first Ten Amendments. The Bill of Rights simply are not like any other subsequent Amendments to the United States Constitution. For example, while the 21st Amendment was able to repeal the 18th Amendment, this simply is not possible for any of the Amendments that make up the Bill of Rights. This is due to the undeniable fact that our Constitution itself was only ratified on the contingent that the Bill of Rights would be immediately added to it. This renders the repeal of any of these amendments as an invalidation of the agreement that ratified the Constitution in the first place.
If Congress or a national Article V convention were to repeal the Second Amendment, this would in effect be a repeal of the United States Constitution itself. To argue for its repeal requires the same sort of ignorance that it would take to argue against the right to free speech or a fair trial.
Furthermore, Mr. Stephens’ “expert opinion” displays a complete and total lack of knowledge about basic laws and legal case histories.
In United States v. Cruikshank, the Supreme Court of the United States ruled that the Constitution is not what granted American citizens the right to bear arms, but that this right existed before the Constitution was written. Furthermore, the Supreme Court went on to say that the right to bear arms doesn’t even rely on the Constitution; the purpose of the 2nd Amendment was to limit the government, not to define what the rights of Americans were.
The old argument that the wording of the Second Amendment was intended specifically for militias and not individuals was rendered obsolete in 2008, when the Supreme Court ruled on the District of Columbia v. Heller and said that individuals had the right to possess firearms, regardless of any actual connection to a militia.
It doesn’t really matter what your opinions on guns are, Bret Stephens’ proposed solution simply does not work on any level. You can agree with him that the Iraq War was a good idea and that climate change is a myth; however, his position on the Second Amendment is so brain-numbingly awful that it cannot be defended by any measure.
