Today is March 24, 2018, a date that will, hopefully, someday, maybe, be looked back on as a monumental day in American history, a milestone in our national progress that ultimately led to the end of our culture of gun violence.
Of course, that may be asking too much, thanks to a poorly written, misinterpreted, antiquated Second Amendment. An amendment, by the way, which was an afterthought to the Constitution only included to mollify those within the precariously new ruling class who feared short-term British vengeance and a forthcoming destruction of this “amusing experiment with American democracy.”
That didn’t happen (well, it almost did in 1812-1814), and the Constitution became our legal foundation as well as a political blueprint for a time when white people owned black people, the average life span was 35 years old, and news was spread through people yelling on the street.
The Constitution was groundbreaking at the time, but was written by very flawed men, who owned human beings, whose foresight has been proven inaccurate, and who prayed to dogs. The founding fathers had no foresight into gay marriage or iPhones, 9/11 or self-driving cars (or any cars, for that matter), private Facebook profile data or lunatics shooting people in schools, movie theaters and malls. Guns can now kill dozens of people a minute, men can become women, women can become men, white people marry black people, and news is spread through people yelling on twitter and cable channels.
Yet people continue to treat the Constitution as if it’s some all-knowing mystical force, beamed to us from outer space by omniscient alien gods who were absolutely certain of the facts that slavery should be legal, only white men over 21 could vote, and that presidents could serve in office for an indefinite number of terms.
Turns out they got those things wrong. But what they got right was knowing that the Constitution and even the Bill of Rights might have to change with the times. Article Five of the Constitution spells it out: "The Congress, whenever two-thirds of both Houses [the House and the Senate] shall deem it necessary, shall propose amendments to this Constitution . . ." and three-fourths of the states have to approve the amendment for it to become law.
Things change much more rapidly than our government and legal system can. There have been only two changes to the Constitution since 1967. But a lot has happened during the past 40 years.
Shit, a lot has happened in the past 40 days.
Changing the Constitution won’t be easy, but that doesn’t mean we should set that as a goal. Even if it takes years, and we accomplish smaller goals along the way, we need to keep our eyes on this prize, and this target in our sights (ok, bad metaphor...).
So as we march for gun safety today, engaging in a practice exercised by generations of Americans doing their own parts to blaze a path of progress...
Let’s celebrate what those founding fathers got right - our legal right to use our voices to force change - when protesting the things they got wrong;
Let’s be both proud to be an American today, and let’s also be ashamed of what we have allowed that to mean;
Let’s immediately start thinking and planning for what comes next AFTER today’s marches, our second act in this drama;
Let’s keep the march going with elections, holding our lawmakers accountable and using courts when all else fails;
and Let’s #NeverAgain allow the mistakes of the past to prevent a future of prosperity.
