Nobody is trying to repeal the Second Amendment. (Presumed Part 1.)

The Constitution provides that an amendment may be proposed either by the Congress with a two-thirds majority vote in both the House of Representatives and the Senate or by constitutional convention called for by two-thirds of the State legislatures. ~From US national archives website, via Google.

*Nobody* is trying to repeal the 2nd Amendment.

Repeat this until you understand it.

Per Article V of the United States Constitution and established practice and legal and legislative precedent (See Also: "Prohibition" and "Repeal of Prohibition.) IT TAKES AN AMENDMENT TO REPEAL AN AMENDMENT!

Again, repeat this until you understand it.

Nobody is trying to repeal the Second Amendment:

Nobody is trying to reinterpret it in any form that would disarm a majority of law-abiding presumably mentally stable adults.

Nothing of the sort is taking place.

But, let's suppose somebody were to propose such a thing (and the Bill didn't die in committee.)

Imagine America, 2025, with current level of dipshit unabated.

Say hypothetical liberal Representative Wun Hung Lo (D-CA) a younger Asian-American aspiring socialist originally from Eugene, Oregon...but now residing in and representing the Bay Area in Congress...and a hero to both Liberals and Never Trump Republicans for having traveled to Hong Kong in 2019 and gotten arrested while protesting...then got elected campaigning on being to the Left of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in 2020 (and somehow survived several elections since) comes up with such an idea.

We'll call it the Cold Dead Hands Amendment. Note that it does not ban guns, only instituting gun regulation favored by 84% of Americans or more at a Constitutional level...but critics call it an "End run around the absolutist positions set by SCOTUS" and charge that it sets the tone for harsher restrictions in the future.

Say he or she (and can we really rule out a trans-person, just in case?) finds a Republican willing to co-sponsor this monstrosity.

Theoretical Republican Ira Lee Goatscrew (D: ND) an old, white, but unusually peaceful ultra-conservative Fundamentalist Christian Big-C Conservative beloved of the state's small Plymouth Brethren community who, to his lasting embarrassment (but to the pride of his voters) got a Ronald Reagan Tattoo during his misspent youth as an Aircraft Armament Systems Technician in the Strategic Air Command...but who after studying the issue in college realized just how close we came to nuclear Armageddon during Able Archer '83 (an exercise in which he and his unit, the 319th Bombardment Wing at Grand Forks AFB, ND, participated) and chose to renounce all violence, yet somehow he still gets elected to Congress in 2020 and won reelection several times since by an overwhelming landslide.

He's put the Peace Garden State on the political map and is widely favored to win if he runs for the Senate. He ran the first time on the idea that he would make Trump stop taking the Lord's name in vain...and has stayed in office by placing himself as a direct contrast to Ilhan Omar and Keith Ellison in Minnesota and his district voters love him for it.

Somehow, these two get this beast out of Committee, there was in fact much quoting of Jesus Christ involved.

Somehow, they persuade the new Speaker of the House, none other than Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AKA 'The Second Coming of Nancy Pelosi" herself...now lampooned by what remains of Conservatism as "WHAT DO YOU MEAN I HAVE TO BE A RESPONSIBLE ADULT?!) to go along, and the thing passes the House by a vast majority.

Despite vicious opposition by the few remaining Senate Republicans (especially the new Senate Minority Leader, Roy Moore, R-AL) and even a few Democrats including the junior Senator from Kentucky, Amy McGrath (D-Fuck You Mitch) it squeaks through the Senate with 79 of what's now 104 votes.

Several states threaten to rebel if the Amendment is even brought up for ratification in their legislatures. ANTIFA (!) bros and militia nuts hold dueling protests in Oregon with each group carrying signs that say "Fuck that guy, but we're both against this shit!"

Because we live in the dumbest of all possible worlds: Over the tearful objections of Vice President Williamson...for once in her life newly re-elected President Gabbard does the sensible thing and vetoes this mess. She knows full well that Congress doesn't have the votes to override her and half the states wouldn't ratify this mess anyway and a few even threatened secession over it.

Her publicly-stated and largely-accepted rationale being that while the current system could use a lot of fixing, better the devil we know than the devil we don't.

And even if it's only Alabama, South Carolina and Wyoming, SECDEF PETE publicly said "No" to the suggestion of active duty military units being deployed Stateside again and threatened to resign if ordered to federalize the National Guard in such a case.

Buttigieg specifically stated that "The current priority of the United States Armed Forces is countering the European Union's new Antimatter weapons" leaving unspoken that the unexpected and ironic election of Northern Irish firebrand Ian Paisley, Jr. as EU President leaves a maniac with his finger on the big blue button...a man who has called American democracy, the Catholic church, lately the Neo-Soviet Empire and Israel's new lesbian Prime Minister "the AntiChrist."

Plus, After the embarrassing performance by both sides that some call the Second Civil War...but that the Right is unusually politically-correct about calling "The Emergency" and just barely holding the line in the Baltic States, Poland and Western Ukraine against Putin's much-reduced but still newly re-designated Red Army and nearly a decade of daily domestic terrorist attacks, nobody really wants more war and that's what it would come to.

In all cases, at all times, no matter what kind of stupidity is the result, because screw rationality, this is America damn it.

Even with 84% of the population having supported numerous gun regulations since the mass murders of the late 2010's, Even after the death of the NRA. Even after the grim specatcle of Seb Gorka negligently shooting himself in the groin while blowing Gavin McInnes live on Trump TV last year...

See what I did there?

And Why?

Because yeah, the numbers aren't that far off from what they are right now, but that ain't the point.

The point is nobody wants this thing, and short of mass conversion to Marianne Williamson's Rama Rama Ding Ding peaceful philosophy...which despite being loopy as hell isn't a bad idea...nobody ever is going to want it, either.

Because it's in the Bill Of Rights, damn it. Because it takes a goddamned Amendment to the US Constitution to repeal a goddamned Amendment to the US Constitution, because even if you got some kind of a gun ban or second amendment repeal past Congress, there's the President, and if you got it by the President there's still the courts and then even after that, still three-fourths of the States...and some of those fuckers are crazy.

Because no matter how much things change or how liberal the country gets or how "attacked" the conservatives feel, there's always going to be enough fanatics on both sides of the aisle, enough gun nuts and overall rights-absolutists that it's almost certainly going to be better to go with the devil we know than the devil we don't.

And here's the funny part:

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. ~Second Amendment, United States Constitution.

Doesn't the entire concept here, as written in the Second Amendment, sort of imply that regulation is not just needed, but required?

Nobody is trying to repeal the Second Amendment, and if they were, it would never work. Our legal and legislative system is designed to be inefficient as fuck for a reason. Repeat this until you understand it.

If you haven't learned that after almost three years of this crap-fest you haven't been paying attention.

It takes an Amendment to repeal an Amendment. There's a reason for that. This applies to the Second Amendment as much as any other.

Anybody who tells you different is not your friend.

It's always open season on the First Amendment somewhere, though, and that's cool, at least according to "Conservatives."

Apparently some people think it's the media's or society's job to do nothing but lavishly and publicly polish their side's collective knob.

I suppose that's kind of like those Evangelicals who think Jesus gets all soggy and hard to light if the universe doesn't shout their beliefs word-for-word back in their faces.

And if they can't finagle a way to force their Epuration Stupide on the media either Constitutionally or legally...well there's always the Benghazi bullshit route and either a few of the donors or enough of the chuds might just be able to be bamboozled into funding some kind of extra-legal "Investigation."

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
~First Amendment to the United States Constitution.

Anybody who tells you anything different from this, anybody who champions any restriction of it or tries to get around it with some kind of extra-legal black-bag bullshit...violent or otherwise, is not your friend either.

Anybody who does not want you to know what is true...politically, religiously, scientifically...you name it IS NOT YOUR FRIEND. They do not support you. They do not support whatever your belief system is. Chances are, they are only out to manipulate you for their own personal gain.

Anybody who takes an absolutist approach to the Second Amendment, while taking any sort of minimalist approach to the First Amendment, is not your friend.

And ya know, it bugs the shit out of me how many people get a big damn hard-on talking about the Second Amendment, but they positively hate the First.

They quite likely think that either you're stupid, or you're too fearful of or hateful towards your own neighbors to worry about the lies they want to be able to tell without being challenged.

And the fact that people are dumb or politically partisan or willfully ignorant enough to keep falling for this type of shit is exactly why we're in this mess.

As a former conservative, I am here to tell you that whether it's right or wrong, I was taught that the only reason worth a damn for why we even have the Second Amendment is to protect the First Amendment and the rights provided therein from both overreach by the State and from foreign threat.

Because even back when the Founding Fathers came up with all this stuff they knew that motherfuckers gonna be motherfuckers, and some people cannot be trusted to do either the right thing or the legal thing without the threat of consequences for not doing it.

And that, too, is something that some people need to take note of. We the People are always both the first line and the last line of defense.

Vote accordingly, and vote for people in government who will do so as well, because the alternatives are a big damn mess.