Do away with the Second Amendment?

Kellerman: a call to disarm - Opinion

Chris kellerman, a Visual and Performing Arts student at Texas Tech has written an opinion piece for Texas Tech's newspaper, The Daily Toreador. This article concerns doing away with the Second Amendment to the Constitution of the United States.

...I think we need to take one away. Here it is: "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.

"You got it - the Second Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. Frankly, folks, I'm tired of it. We debate it all the time and get nowhere, so I say let's just remove it all together.

So, Mr. Kellerman is tired of debating about the Second Amendment, and is promoting doing away with it. Mr. Kellerman does not appear to understand history, the history of the United States or of the world in general. Mr. Kellerman does not understand the genius of our constitution, or of the men that wrote it. As a matter of fact he states:

...I am so tired of it! People throw quotes from Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin into political debates with me all the time, and I want to hit them in the face. Who cares what James Madison and the rest said? They've been dead for more than 150 years!

While Mr. Kellerman exercises his First Amendment rights, he wants to "hit" people in the face who use history and reason in a debate with him. He gets angry when people use logic to discredit his opinions. His anger is proof that his arguments are not sound, and that his opinion lacks merit.

Mr. Kellerman goes on to explain that the constitution is outdated because some of the Founding Fathers owned slaves. That reasoning is not worthy of comment.

Mr. Kellerman wants to do away with the Second Amendment because he wants to do away with guns. He looks at the results of gun violence and comes to the conclusion that the guns perpetrate that violence.

According to the National Center for Health Statistics, there were more than 30,000 gun deaths in the United States in 2003 - all because of guns. Gun-lovers often say things such as, "Guns don't kill people. People do." Well, that's true, it is not the gun itself that kills a person. However, it certainly makes it easier.

30,000 firearm related deaths during 2003. Mr. kellerman does not mention that 16,000 of those firearm deaths were due to suicide (this is less than half the total suicides). If you take out the suicides and the deaths due to legal intervention/war, you are down to 12,900 firearm related deaths due to homicide or accident. 12,900 is still a very large number, but let us put this into perspective. How many people died in the U.S. during 2003? Care to take a guess?

2,448,288! Out of two and a half million deaths, approximately 13,000 were firearm related homicides or accidents. That is less than 1/3 the number of people who died from the flu and pneumonia. Perspective is a good thing.

If you want to reduce the number of homicides committed each year with a firearm, lock up the criminal that committed that crime. Lock him up and either dispose of him, or throw away the key forever.

Mr. Kellerman, I hope that you read this. It is important that you come to understand one of the basic building blocks of America, what had differentiated the United States of America from the rest of the world.

The Preamble to the Declaration of Independence states:

...We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government...

You see Mr. Kellerman, the Right to Keep and Bear Arms is not given to us by the Second Amendment, it is affirmed by it. Our creator has endowed us with the unalienable Rights to Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. If we have the unalienable right to Life, then we also have the unalienable right to protect that life. If we have the unalienable right to Liberty, then we have the unalienable right to protect that liberty. The Second Amendment has nothing to do with hunting or gun collecting. The Second Amendment is to ensure that the people have the ability to enforce their right to "...whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or abolish it, and to institute new Government..."

By giving up the right to Keep and Bear arms, the right to protect our freedoms, you are giving up the right to all freedoms. Yes Chris, even the right to publish your thoughts in the school paper.