George Leef’s latest column for Forbes examines a questionable critique of the Second Amendment.
The massacre in Orlando has prompted many demands for still more laws intended to prevent deranged killers like Omar Mateen from getting their hands on firearms. It has also occasioned more radical ideas, including the repeal of the Second Amendment.
That is exactly what Drexel University law professor David S. Cohen proposes in his June 13th article in Rolling Stone, “Why It’s Time to Repeal the Second Amendment.”
Naturally, Cohen’s writing is full of passion. Anti-gun forces will no doubt laud his piece as visionary and compelling. It lacks any good arguments, however and suffers from the fatal flaw of all “progressive” demands for more laws to solve problems – the assumption that just because a law is meant to accomplish some objective, it actually will accomplish it.
Before opening his attack on the Second Amendment, Cohen reminds us that the Constitution shouldn’t be treated as sacrosanct. On that, I agree with him. Some of its power concessions to the federal government were unwise, as the Anti-federalists argued during the ratification debates, such as giving Congress the power to borrow.
But much of the Constitution is sound, even if sometimes ignored. The First Amendment, for example, was wisely intended to keep politics out of religion, the press and free speech. The Fifth Amendment was sensibly intended to protect private property. Both are fraying around the edges, but it would be disastrous to repeal them and let politics run wild in those spheres.
So, what about the Second? Cohen contends that it is “outdated” because the Constitution’s drafters couldn’t imagine the rapid-fire weapons we now have. True, they probably couldn’t have, but they wouldn’t have written it differently even if they had.
