Repeal the Second Amendment

Yellow Scene welcomes Letters to the Editor and is happy to publish your thoughts, within limit. Please send all love letters, hate mail, curious thoughts, and open letters to [email protected].

I appreciate the concerns behind HB 23-1230 to ban assault weapons in Colorado. However, this proposal clearly violates the independent clause of the Second Amendment. The proper first step towards gun control would be repealing the Second Amendment.  

The Second Amendment was a product of a different time, predating modern weapons of mass destruction. It was rooted in armed slave patrols to suppress potential slave uprisings.

The US Constitution is an archaic document with no legitimate authority, yet legislators take an oath to uphold it. If the United States continues to exist as a political entity, a new Constitution should be designed and approved by a new constitutional convention.  

The original constitutional convention was held in secret by a handful of rich white men – predominantly slaveholders – who designed a system to preserve their own wealth and power. The constitution they drafted excluded about 94 percent of the population from the right to representation in government. 

I would support a vote at a new constitutional convention to repeal the Second Amendment as a precursor to debating legislation regulating personal weapon ownership.

Slaveholder Thomas Jefferson wrote that a constitution could not bind future generations. He argued that a constitution should expire after one generation. I agree that future generations should not be bound by the dictates of their barbarous ancestors. Each generation should hold its own constitutional convention to create a new system of government, at least once every twenty years.

Gary Swing
Boulder, Colorado