There is significant gun violence in America. It seems as if each day, when I turn on the news, I see another story about a shooting. Many are local, some are national news, and some barely get a 30 second mention. Much is made about the need to do something, anything to stop “the violence”. In that light, this week, President Biden took executive action to prevent gun violence.
On Thursday, April 8th, President Biden held a press conference and announced several executive actions involving gun control that he claimed do not impinge on the Second Amendment in any way.
This is an interesting assertion, and I am not here to argue one way or the other as to the validity of the President’s assertion. What I do want to do is look at the context of the second amendment and the President’s frustration.
The text of the amendment is short – Amendment II “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.”
There has been much discussion about these words and what they mean, and the debate will likely continue through my lifetime and beyond.
Anecdotally, some discussion one typically hears sounds something like this – “there’s no reason someone needs a weapon of war with 100 rounds, 100 bullets that can be fired from that weapon. Nobody needs that. Nobody needs that.” That’s a quote from President Biden’s speech on Thursday, April 8th 2021.
One might equally contend that when the Second Amendment was written, the arms available to the colonists (who were revolutionaries themselves) were the state of the art weapons available at that time. The President also claims in his speech that ”From the very beginning, you couldn’t own any weapon you wanted to own.” I’m not certain that is factual, and would love to see The President’s evidence supporting his assertion.
Again, this is not the issue I want to cover here. The fact is that the Second Amendment exists, even if we as Americans cannot always agree about what it means.
President Biden also said in his speech on April 8th that “no amendment to the Constitution is absolute.” This is also true. The American people have decided many times that The Constitution needed Amending. In one case, prohibition, the 18th Amendment prohibited the “manufacture, sale, or transportation of intoxicating liquors“. The American people then changed their minds and The 21st Amendment then repealed the 18th!
The point is that the President was absolutely correct in saying that no Amendment is absolute. He is wrong in his approach in trying to enact gun control without resorting to the process of either involving Congress or beginning an attempt at amending The Constitution. I am not a lawyer, and I do not claim to be a legal or constitutional scholar. I can read, though, and at the very least, the overarching attempt by our President to achieve by fiat what he cannot achieve in the Legislature is the wrong approach.
If you disagree, I invite your respectful reply.
Unspun1966
America Unspun 
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