Repeal the Second Amendment

“In order to be a good lawyer, you must be an informed citizen of the world, the nation, and of your state and city.”

As a law professor, I recite those words in all of my first lectures for each class, no matter the topic. As part of the introduction to each class, I discuss current events and how those events can be viewed through a historical lens.

This March, however, I had to apologize to my law students in a class about the Constitution, because I forgot to mention a mass shooting that had just taken place. I’m sorry, I told them — I’ve just become so inured by America’s gun violence. I, who keep photos of the Sandy Hook children and their teacher near the Shabbat candles in my living room, forgot to mention another mass shooting.

But then I asked them: Do you know how many people were killed at the massage parlors in Atlanta (eight) or the people killed at a grocery store in Boulder, Colo., (10)?

Earlier this month, 10 people were killed at a Buffalo, N.Y., supermarket. One day later, my sister, a physician, had to write an obituary for a colleague who was gunned down at his mother’s Taiwanese church in Southern California.

I cried as I wrote this essay on Tuesday evening, after the school shooting in Uvalde, Texas. I am more than disheartened.

» READ MORE: Gunman kills 19 children, 2 adults in Texas school rampage

These incidents demonstrate that elections have consequences. During the Donald Trump era, then-Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell rushed through Trump’s judicial appointees who are Second Amendment ideologues. The Second Amendment’s right to “a well-regulated militia” has exploded into an almost unchallengeable right to bear any kind of firearm (from handguns to assault weapons).

Just this month, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals (the federal circuit that includes California) in a 2-1 decision held that California’s ban on 18- to 20-year-olds having semiautomatic weapons violated the U.S. Constitution.

“Enough with legislation fixes and firearm enthusiast jurists’ interpretations.”

The two automatic-weapon unapologists? They’re Trump appointees: Judges Ryan Nelson and Kenneth Lee. Judge Nelson, in his 55-page opinion, heralded the young patriots of America. “America would not exist without the heroism of the young adults who fought and died in our revolutionary army,” he wrote. “Today we reaffirm that our Constitution still protects the right that enabled their sacrifice: the right of young adults to keep and bear arms.”

This followed a similar decision about handgun access, from July. A Trump appointee in the Fourth Circuit, Judge Julius Richardson, wrote an opinion jettisoning a 1968 gun law that banned handgun sales to 18- to 20-year-olds.

Judge Richardson called such a restriction of the young adults constitutionally arbitrary. He explained: “... there must be a reason why constitutional rights cannot be enjoyed until a certain age.”

Now on the U.S. Supreme Court’s caseload is a challenge to New York’s anti-public display of firearms. This case, if resolved the way it seems by a nine-member court with Trump appointees in the majority, would permit all those 18 and older to “open carry” firearms, even in states that currently prohibit open carry.

Enough with legislation fixes and firearm enthusiast jurists’ interpretations. Enough with the “thoughts and prayers,” and magical thinking that people who rage will hang up their weapons without intervention and will stop killing each other. Enough with the innumerable mass shootings that blur together in our memories, so that we can’t even remember who, where, and how many have died.

Enough.

Call a constitutional convention. Repeal the Second Amendment.

Julie A. Werner-Simon is a former federal prosecutor, former constitutional law fellow, and currently serves as a law professor (adjunct) at Drexel University’s Kline School of Law, University of Southern California’s Gould School of Law, and is also a legal analyst at Drexel’s LeBow School of Business.