A Constitutional slippery slope

In a recent opinion column, Bob Brown calls for limiting the Second Amendment protection of our right to keep and bear arms. He states:

“We own an estimated 300 million firearms but also lead the world in gun violence ... Modern assault-style weapons are capable of firing five rounds per second and are commonly equipped with thirty-round magazines ...

“Neither armed resistance to a potentially tyrannical government, nor self-defense from a criminal assailant provides rational justification for such a weapon. The same goes for any semiautomatic firearm with more than a 10-shot capacity. Is there any legitimate need for sound suppressers? Armor-piercing bullets? Apparently the NRA thinks so.”

I disagree with Bob. Before we further restrict our right to bear arms, I suggest we choose carefully what parts of our Constitution are not important.

When we look at the situation with our passion in check, as we always should when making changes to our Constitution and laws, we will note firearms protect many many more lives than they take away in our society.

Government figures from the National Survey of Criminal Victimization suggest in the early 1990s there were 100,000 uses a year of guns in self-defense against crime. (That number is likely lower today because of the decrease in the crime rate.) The vast majority of those uses were the display of weapons to deter or dissuade.

Total abolition of “assault” style rifles with 30-shot capacity magazines, sound suppressors and armor-piercing bullets would have minimal affect on homicides. In 2010, there were 6,009 murders committed by handguns and only 358 by rifles of all kinds.

But if we are going to change the Constitution in spite of the facts, we have some options:

• We can amend the First Amendment and outlaw speech that promotes violence. While this would outlaw violent video games, it might also include movies about the Revolutionary War, Civil War, World War I, World War II, Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq War and Star Wars,

• We can additionally amend the First Amendment to outlaw religions that damn America, call for the death of infidels, or justify the slaughters noted in the Old Testament of the Bible,

• We can totally repeal the Second Amendment, take away our right to keep and bear arms, and place our citizens in the same situation the citizens of England, Australia, China and Cuba presently occupy,

• We can amend the Fifth and Sixth amendments to allow the lynching of anyone who kills anyone under the age of 10, or

• We can change the courts’ interpretation of the Eighth Amendment to allow capital punishment of these deranged psychopaths who kill our children.

While some of these ideas might sound good to some, I suggest we use caution before changing our Constitution in any of these ways.

Rep. Jerry O’Neil, R-Columbia Falls, represents House District 3.