Repeal the Second Amendment
The Whiskey Rebellion of the 1790s, the New York draft riots of 1863, the coal miners’ rebellion of 1921, the Brink’s
robbery of 1981 — does any serious conservative think of these as great moments in Second Amendment activism?
Democratic politicians routinely profess their fidelity to the Second Amendment — or rather, “a nuanced reading”
of it — with all the conviction of Barack Obama’s support for traditional marriage, circa 2008.
Background checks for private gun sales are another fine idea, though its effects on homicides will be negligible:
guns recovered by police are rarely in the hands of their legal owners, a 2016 study found.
The civilian AR-15 is not a true “assault rifle,” and banning such rifles would have little
effect on the overall murder rate, since most homicides are committed with handguns.
“States with higher rates of gun ownership had disproportionately large numbers of deaths from firearm-related
homicides,” noted one exhaustive 2013 study in the American Journal of Public Health.
I’m not the first pundit to point out that if a “Mohammad Paddock” had purchased dozens of firearms
and thousands of rounds of ammunition and then checked himself into a suite at the Mandalay Bay with direct views to a nearby music festival, somebody at the local F. B.I.
Maybe it’s because they argue their case badly and — let’s face it — in bad faith.
