On the morning of the 4th of July, I was having a late breakfast and reflecting on my inability to summon up very patriotic feelings. There were, it seemed to me, simply too many serious problems for which our national responses have ranged from inadequate to pathetic. We have been polarized and paralyzed into becoming the Disunited States of America. A toxic pall of partisanship hovers at every level in the country: from our purported leaders in Washington, to politicians at state and local levels, and even to relationships among friends and family.
And then television brought the news of a shooting at a parade in Highland Park, Illinois. My immediate thoughts were for a cousin and her family, who live in that community. I soon found that they were safely out of town, but just that fleeting and tenuous connection had made the dreadful event more jarring. How many others, I wondered, have suffered, or are destined to suffer, losses from gun violence that are real and direct?
Coming on the 4th of July, supposedly a day of celebration for our whole country, the Highland Park shooting was an ironic but fitting symbol of how far we have fallen, as a country and a culture. In 1984, President Ronald Reagan spoke powerfully of “Morning in America,” when he addressed a revitalized country. Today it seems that Mourning in America is the all too appropriate term. We mourn not only the victims of mass shooting but the loss of reasons to believe that America is, as President Ronald Reagan claimed, a “shining city upon a hill.”
Ronald Reagan was not a perfect president. Who in our lifetimes was? Reagan sometimes got things wrong, and he made some serious mistakes. But he did have vision and a contagious confidence. There is no one today in either party who appears to embody such qualities in sufficient measure. Perhaps someone will emerge to help us find a way forward, but that is hardly guaranteed.
I have no potential candidate to put forward, still less a recipe for addressing our many ills. But the Highland Park atrocity suggested to me at least one course of action. A second irony of Highland Park is that it came on the heels of a Supreme Court decision pronouncing yet another radically expansive and historically dubious interpretation of the Second Amendment. Indeed, it is not even clear that every aspect of the constructive but very limited gun legislation recently engineered by Senator Chris Murphy, with the support of a few brave Republicans, will pass muster with this Court.
The Fourth of July should remind us that sometimes there is no substitute for bold action. After all, the signers of the Declaration were brave men who took enormous risks in pledging their lives, their fortunes and their sacred honor to the cause of independence. Is it not time for bold action attempting to bring some cure to our national disease of gun violence? Specifically, if a distorted interpretation of the Second Amendment has become the fortified castle of limitless gun rights, can we not resolve to storm that castle by repealing the Amendment?
Repeal of the Second Amendment has been urged by others in the past, most notably former Supreme Court Justice, John Paul Stevens four years ago. His proposal gained little support at the time, but since then the shootings and deaths have continued to multiply. Surely there must be a tipping point somewhere, sometime.
I have no illusions that the repeal of the Second Amendment would be easily accomplished, but no honor would be lost in the attempt. A movement for repeal would, at the very least, provide a vessel to convey our national disgust at the killings and the craven politicians who view them with a blind eye. The movement could thereby add impetus to various legislative proposals for gun control. Conceivably, such a movement would also help us to find the will and the courage to seek solutions to some of the many other grave problems that beset us. If it did, we might once again see Morning in America.
There is an excellent op-ed by Ronald Reagan’s daughter, Patti Davis, in today’s (July 6) NY Times, “Living in Fear of a Concealed Gun.” After describing her father’s near assassination and her own daily fear of gun violence, she writes:
“Fear is a breeding ground for autocracy, and history shows us that every democracy that has crumbled did so in an atmosphere of fear.” Indeed, that is where our country seems headed thanks to a right-wing Supreme Court and a spineless Republican Party. It’s not just the crazy Supreme Court ruling on New York’s gun safety law, but a series of ill-considered rulings on reproductive rights, environmental regulation and public subsidy of religious schools. If the right-wingers get their way, no one but the wealthy and the powerful will be well. The insane, megalomaniacal, and pathological liars who support Donald Trump will run this country into the dirt.
A story is told that Ben Franklin was walking out of Independence Hall after the Constitutional Convention of 1787, when someone shouted out, “Doctor, what have we got? A republic or a monarchy?” To which Franklin replied, “A republic, if you can keep it.”
Can we keep our republic? I have no doubt that we can. Many states are already enacting gun safety laws that challenge Justice Thomas’ expansive reading of the Second Amendment. The New York legislature, for example, has outlawed the public from carrying guns in Times Square, not to mention in nightclubs, on subways, buses, trains, etc. Let’s see what Thomas has to say about that. Indeed, the courts will be flooded with litigation on gun safety laws for years to come. We can win this fight through sheer persistence and common sense.
The same goes for laws which entitle rape and incest victims to terminate a pregnancy. And laws which state that a woman whose life is in danger or who is carrying a defective fetus has every right to terminate a pregnancy. Climate change laws and regulations are no longer discretionary: they are essential to protect our country from the ravages of floods, hurricanes, drought, forest fires and other man-made catastrophes.
I would certainly support amending the Constitution to eliminate the 2d Amendment. But, in the meantime, let’s elect a Congress that will enact term limits for all federal judges, a measure which should have broad public appeal.
We simply must take back our country from hooligans and extremists.
Excellent points Doug, with which I very much agree. I don’t see much hope for limiting these horrible events unless we repeal the 2nd amendment. Thanks for posting.
Thanks, Doug. We have a great sense of loss, everyone of us. Our wonderful country, founded on still stunningly uplifting ideals, seems to be disappearing. The ideals we aspired to attain, are no longer shared by a large portion of our fellow citizens. Another significant portion, focused on the misdeeds of many of our founders, ignore the unique greatness of those ideals, and offer nothing in return. There is a sadness, that is very hard to overcome, in all of this.
We went to the fireworks display in town and were thinking the same sentiments. We didn’t wear red, white and blue and were thinking of the devastation in Chicago. My college friend, a doctor in Chicago, was called into work to help the families of the victims. We hugged the kiddos hard and hope for a better place for them in the future.
Where are the good candidates? How come we need to define strong succession plans in my office for “key roles” yet we can’t do the same for the Oval Office?
Hope you guys are doing ok, despite the climate in the country. Hi to A.
My cousin’s ex-wife lives in Highland Park, and their young adult daughter was visiting her mom for the holiday; they thought about going to the parade, but luckily decided to skip it & go to the “Fourth Fest” in the park behind the mom’s home after the parade. (Needless to say, the Fest was canceled.)
The 4th of July used to be one of my favorite days too, Doug…but like you, I found it sad this year even before I heard @ the Highland Park parade massacre.
You are quite right that repealing the Second Amendment is the only way to go, especially with the (patently erroneous, in my judgment) interpretation of same by the radical Supreme Court we have now…and are likely stuck with for decades (do you ever get tired of being right?). But if legislators are so intimidated by their voters & the gun lobby (let alone the Court), that even the very modest restrictions on gun-access Congress recently enacted are deemed to be a bi-partisan “miracle,” then no more than a tiny handful cd be expected to support repeal. And then ratification by 2/3 of the states??? Maybe someday…but leave aside my lifetime, not in my daughter’s either…and probably not in my grandchildren’s (although I’ve read that statisticians predict that @ half the girls born the year my granddaughter was born will live to be 100…so maybe she’ll live to see it…if she isn’t shot within the next 93 years).
The wonderful woman who took care of my daughter for the first years of her life had a little girl of her own…who was 46 when she was shot by the sniper at the Las Vegas concert in October 2017. Samanta was seriously injured but survived…but suffered myriad related medical problems which ultimately led to her death in May 2020.
Sadly, a repeal of the Second Amendment, while clearly appropriate under these post-1787 days, seems currently out of the question. It didn’t have to be that way, if recent Supreme Court iterations had merely taken the careful formulation of the amendment (“well regulated Militia” and “people” being the key terms) seriously. Instead, these recent iterations chose to misconstrue the amendment in a way that insults the clear intentions of the Founders. “You can’t [guard against] Stupid,” as that sad trope goes. We are at risk of losing our democracy—because of Reactionary segment of America that has shanghaied the label, “Conservative,” and our mutilating us with it. Is it worth my while even posting such a view as this? Probably not. Who among us—patriotic Americans, all—did not awaken on July 4th to the same sad sense. The Republican Party in my state (Texas) verbally speaks toward support for the Lone Star seceding from our United States, for effing sakes! I came to the Internet during the 2008 election, convinced I good apply my good-natured spirits to helping heal our divide. The word “Conservative” has been shanghaied by Reactionary forces. As I’ve now said here, twice. In Texas’s GOP, it’s the clear abuser in the relationship who wants out. I want nothing to do, anymore, with anyone who still values a label of ideology—Conservative—above any society’s need to (A) move Forward, while also (B) holding a little bit Back. Happy Fifth of July, everybody! So far today, I have not heard of any Thoughts-requiring & Prayer-worth unavoidable gun massacres, of the type that the rest of the developed world seems to have little bits of trouble with. Happy Mike Flynn takes the Fifth!
Thanks, Doug. I, too, have occasionally entertained fantasies of repealing the 2nd. I call them fantasies because repeal or no repeal leaves un-addressed the matter of 400 million legacy weapons and the uncounted millions of rounds of ammo among us. How would repeal cleanse us of these homicidal and suicidal viruses? I don’t know. Would love to hear your readers’ suggestions.
Amen, Brother Doug! Beth and I agree completely that the Second Amendment and the future of the United States are incompatible. Either we get rid of the unfettered right to own guns–like every other civilized country in the world–or we die as a country. Count us in if you get involved in a movement to bring about repeal.
Your words really resonate with me, Doug, thanks so much for sharing them. You’re not alone in having difficulty mustering a usual degree of patriotism and pride on the 4th. Concern leading to distress over the current dysfunction apparent in all three branches of our government is manifest and massive, with no visible relief in sight. Weak and inept leadership, full voting rights seriously threatened, sensible gun control being reversed, divisive factors blocking positive steps forward, strong voices ridiculed and gaining little traction, all real factors in threatening our national wellbeing and functional democracy. Our nation has exercised considerable survival skills in the past. Will it again? Collective awakening and strength desperately needed!
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