Bret Stephens, one of the token conservatives at the New York Times, has published his second piece in the paper calling for the abolition of the Second Amendment within a year.
His first piece was titled “Repeal the Second Amendment,” and he didn’t get any more creative with his piece published this past weekend, which was titled, “To Repeal: Repeal the Second Amendment.”
He brings up the tired old argument that it’s only after a gun massacre that we don’t act in response to a tragedy. Stephens wrote, “Had Wednesday’s massacre of 17 people at a Florida high school been different in one respect — that is, had alleged perpetrator Nikolas Cruz shouted ‘Allahu akbar’ during the course of his rampage — conservatives would be demanding another round of get-tough measures.”
Well, duh. Look no further than the Pulse Nightclub massacre, in which an ISIS-motivated radical targeted a gay nightclub. Unfortunately for ISIS, the NRA took the blame for the attack in the media. Liberals also tried to blame homophobia for the attack, apparently unaware of what the Koran says about homosexuals.
The media’s response was so absurd that ISIS themselves published an article titled, “Why We Hate you and Why We Fight You” (SOURCE: page 30) in which they explicitly remind us that they’ll hate America no matter what unless we become a Muslim nation.
But back to the main point: Combating Islamic extremism doesn’t conflict with our constitutional rights, and it’s a problem where an armed populace would come in handy.
Plus, Islamic extremism is a much easier problem to combat. If the majority of terrorists come from a certain number of countries, then you simply restrict travel and immigration from those countries. Problem solved. Done.
Guns are a whole other story. To give an example a liberal can understand: remember how you think it’s impossible to deport 10 million people? Excellent – now you should understand why we can’t round up 300+ million guns, many of which are unregistered, and millions of which are in the hands of people who would rather die than give them up.
Ironically, Stephens’s explanation for why liberals keep losing the gun control debate is that “Maybe it’s because they argue their case badly and — let’s face it — in bad faith.” We agree – but can’t help but note that this “conservative” argument for gun control is just as bad.
Surely Stephens must be aware that tens of thousands of constitutional amendments have been proposed, and only 33 constitutional amendments have been approved by Congress and sent to states for ratification since 1789, of which only 27 were ratified.
What do you think? Does Stephens have a point? Tell us your thoughts below!
