Yes, address mental health care, and, yes, more importantly,
Amend the Second Amendment

The numbers make mass shootings in America look like war. Certainly feels like a war. Per the Gun Violence Archive, there have been 214 mass shootings in the United States of America with over 17,300 deaths by guns from New Year’s Day to the end of May 2022. There were 42 recognized mass shootings in the first 23 days of the month of May, then several more, then another 14 over the Memorial Day holiday weekend. This warfare seems bookended by the predatory, hate-filled slaughter of Black people grocery shopping in Buffalo, New York, and the equally hateful, psychopathic hunting down of little kids and their teachers to shoot and kill in Uvalde, Texas.

Those on the Left bellow, “Do something!” Those on the Right shout, “Do nothing!” The outrage, deflections, and self-righteous demonization boils over and continues to divide us further from doing the “something” the majority of Americans demand. Most of those in the moderate middle feel “sick and tired” of grocery stores, houses of worship, restaurants, city streets, schools, more schools, and yet still more schools getting shot up and say, “Enough is enough!”

Even the “commonsense” gun control reforms people want enacted at a federal level including strict background checks for all purchases, tighter regulation of and even banning of certain military-style firearms and types of magazines will only go so far.

We often experience the rigidity of political extremists on both sides. We see, read, and hear their demonization of each other and everyone else with the quest for opposing utopias between the libertarian right and the socialist left drowning out the voices of our vast pragmatic middle. “Mental health issues” is a term bandied about without serious action steps taken to address them.

What to do? The solution is to go to the source of the controversy, the wording of our Second Constitutional Amendment, and reform it. This shall override the ineffective crazy quilt patchwork of conflicting state and local regulations or lack thereof. It’s simple. We do what’s hard. We do what’s hard first!

The Second Amendment as it’s thus written:

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.

What happened to the “well regulated” declaration? Does it make any sense for militias to be well regulated but not the people and the right of the people? Doesn’t the fact “Arms” at one point included swords and melee weapons and not just firearms mean anything any longer? The term “infringed” didn’t prevent federal, state, and local communities from regulating weapons of all kinds from hunting, personal self-defense, to warfare. The natural human right to self-defense is not even mentioned. Isn’t that odd?

Then when one studies the behind-the-scenes history of crafting the Second Amendment and the narrative of that history upon the broad socio-cultural canvas of America, one learns the “Militia” part was put in there to satisfy the slave-owning states whose militias served primarily to hunt down and capture runaway slaves, suppress Native American (Indian) and poor White farmer revolts, and intimidate into submission any other potential rebels eager to actually “water the trees of liberty.”

Instead of even commonsense bipartisan agreements, however, we sink deeper into the proto-civil war morass of extreme polarization. Political polarization isn’t always a bad thing. It often compels and motivates people to get engaged to resolve otherwise intractable problems, to work together in spite of differences, and accomplish results. Our level of polarization, however, is so severe it generates paralysis of action and rigidity of beliefs. Paralysis locks polarization into frozen conflicts where emotions back up to build up into might pools of fear, anger, and hostility that may burst forth as vast Ice Age lakes once did thru giant ice dams.

Today those on the Far Left come across as Communists from the time of Stalin and Mao where all weapons were controlled and owned by the totalitarian State in the name of “the People.” 

Many on the Right, however, are Do-Nothings. They fear the power of the state so they become the state to prevent it from doing anything “progressive,” a code name for “commies” because Marxists with their dialectical materialism claim all progress leads inevitably to communism and atheism. Not exactly true, but that’s the belief. The Right, often buttressed by privilege masquerading as liberty, seek a stagnant status quo so as to remain in control while things fall apart around them in a flood of bullets and blood. Doing nothing leaves the Right in control of the guns and the machinery of regulation.

Today’s Do-Nothings are reminiscent of the old Know-Nothing Party. The Know-Nothings began in the US during the 1840s to peak in the 1850s. They were secretive/covert, nativist/xenophobic, populist/demagogic, racist, anti-immigrant, anti-Catholic, anti-Jewish, and conservative in the most reactionary ways. The irony is the racist Know-Nothings sundered itself over the issue of slavery, and doubly ironic, officially called themselves the Native American Party. Not to conflate themselves with “American Indians,” but to set up White Americans of a Protestant religious bent plus Northern and Western European ethnic origins as the “real” American Natives and thus entitled to real wealth and power.

Amendments are difficult to pass and enact, and it’s been done successfully more than once. Consider the United States hybrid Federal and State governmental system have already passed 27 amendments. Two are considered “inactive” and are in regards to Prohibition. The first ten were accomplished together in 1789 and are referred to as “the Bill of Rights.” The United States has abolished chattel slavery with constitutional amendments. Seventeen amendments have been passed by Congress and the States since the Bill of Rights was enacted. Yes, many attempts to pass other amendments have failed. The Equal Rights Amendment seems to float in eternal purgatory even as it slowly garnered the necessary support. No matter. Despite the institutional awkwardness and extreme hesitancy to tackle reforming the Second Amendment, it certainly can be done. We can do it. Woulda-coulda-shouldas aside, we should do it. But will we? Where is our collective group courage to come together in multipartisan dialogue to compromise and cooperate? We must move beyond the demonization and shouting between so-called “gun grabbers” and “gun nuts.” We should be as outraged by the Do-Nothing Know-Nothings as we are by epidemic of gun violence itself as well as the lack of mental health care.

Let’s address the mental illness issue as its blamed for so many problems. So as far as mental illness goes, yes, let’s open our can of worms. Yes, own it. Require the healthcare industry and the health insurance industry recognize psychological, neurological, mental, and emotional diseases, injuries, and related traumas as Health Care and thus fully covered as such. Don’t separated it out and diminish mental health as the mind is of the body. Provide the institutional infrastructure and the wages and salaries to tackle these issues. The Do-Nothings must stop doing nothing as they piously go around in the wake of these atrocities blaming gun violence on mental illness before posing with their firearm collections for the NRA. Look how many Do-Nothings parrot before the media something to the effect of, “Oh, another mental health crisis. How terrible! Thoughts and prayers. Teachers gotta teach with an AR-15 slung over their shoulders and a pistol on their hips! OK. Next.” Because what’s next is reforming health care as well as the amending the Second Amendment.

Amendment Reform Proposal:

1. Break up the poorly worded Second Amendment into two equal parts.
2. Acknowledged the rights of the States to raise and train a well regulated militia.
3. Enshrine the right to self-defense.
4. There shall be no mention of any weapons including firearms, which would make it easier to both arm the state militias as well as to regulate individual weapons without infringing on one’s basic right to self-defense.

Thus this is proposed as a modest reform to our Second Amendment of the Constitution of the United States:

Free States and Territories each has the right to raise, train, and regulate a disciplined Militia in accordance with its own laws so as to defend its people. Every individual person has the right to self-defense, and the right of the people to defend themselves shall not be infringed.

What do you think and feel about this proposal? What would you word differently? What would you add to the wording so it legally supersedes the current Amendment? As the 21st superseded to repeal the 18th in regards to Prohibition? We know what it takes to amend our Constitution. It’s time, beyond time. Let’s make it so. Do it. For until this work is done more mass shootings are a certainty.

William Dudley Bass
Tuesday 31 May 2022 
Wednesday 1 June 2022
Seattle/Shoreline, Washington
USA
Cascadia
Earth

Sources & Resources:

Alpers, Philip. “Opinion: This is what happened when 3 nations that experienced mass shootings did something about it,” CNN, June 2022: https://www.cnn.com/2022/06/01/opinions/australia-uk-new-zealand-mass-shootings-gun-laws-alpers/index.html.

Editors, The. “Know-Nothing Party,” The Encyclopedia Britannica, 2022: https://www.britannica.com/topic/Know-Nothing-party.

Gun Violence Archive (GVA): https://www.gunviolencearchive.org.

Related articles published here by the author on this website in order of appearance:

2012

“Violence: After Newtown,” http://williamdudleybass.com/violence-after-newtown.

“Guns, Madness, and Mass Shootings as the Perfect Storm of Blowback hits Mount Rainier,” http://williamdudleybass.com/guns-madness-mass-shootings-perfect-storm-blowback-hits-mount-rainier.

2013

“Amend the Second Amendment: An Immodest Proposal,” http://williamdudleybass.com/amend-second-amendment-an-immodest-proposal.

The increasing frequency and intensity of gun violence has been commented on repeatedly in other articles posted here by the author in reference to ongoing LICs (low-intensity conflicts) in the United States as part of the current buildup to possible major civil war and socio-political fragmentation.

 

Copyright © 2022 by William Dudley Bass. All Rights Reserved by the Author & his Descendants until we Humans establish Wise Stewardship over and for our Earth and Solarian Commons. Thank you.