While always an interesting academic exercise to discuss grandiose ideas like repealing the 2nd Amendment, it might be more useful to highlight reforms that are politically possible in the foreseeable future.
As a staunch liberal on most topics, I grew up hunting and fishing almost every day until I went off to college; gun ownership is a normalcy. Believe it or not, some of my family still rely on hunting as a food source during the winter. Intelligent gun control should be based on tight controls, background checks, psychological checks in some form — nothing that violates the 2nd amendment.
If we outright criminalize gun ownership — as we’ve done with drugs — the outcome will simply be the same: a black market, untaxable, deregulated, dangerous, a strain on our police force, with little overall effect on actually decreasing the number of shooting deaths perpetrated by gang members and psychopaths.
John Aitchison
Eugene resident and small business owner