The proverbial cat is out of the bag in Hawaii, where a handful of state lawmakers recently introduced a pair of measures that call for amending or repealing outright the Second Amendment, according to The New American.
So much for claims from anti-gunners that “nobody wants to take your guns.” They only want to nullify your right to have a gun.
This effort began prior to the Friday attack on two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, but thanks to that incident, which has been denounced by every gun rights group on the map, don’t expect proponents of citizen disarmament to drop their efforts.
The New American identified the proponents of repeal as State Senators Rosalyn Baker, Stanley Chang, Drew Kanuha, Karl Rhoads and Laura Thielen. This isn’t Chang’s first rodeo on the issue. Last year he and former State Rep. Kaniela Ing introduced a similar resolution but it didn’t advance, according to Civic Beat.
According to one report published by Civil Beat, Harvey Gerwig, president of the Hawaii Rifle Association, the state’s affiliate to the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms, called the effort “crazy as hell.”
“The Second Amendment is the only amendment that protects all the others,” Gerwig observed. “It is eminently as important and/or more important than any of the others, such as free speech.”
For decades, anti-gunners contended that the Second Amendment only protected a “collective right” of the states to maintain a militia. But that argument was shattered with the 2008 ruling in District of Columbia v. Dick Anthony Heller. In that detailed analysis of the amendment, the late Associate Justice Antonin Scalia, writing for the majority, determined that the right protected by the amendment is an individual one, and it is fundamental. A majority of state constitutions also include right to bear arms tenets, and they are typically stronger in wording than the Second Amendment.
It’s not that the Hawaii effort has any genuine hope of gathering momentum on the mainland, but it does signal a new – and to many gun rights activists, alarming – boldness to be so outright about the political left’s animosity toward the right to keep and bear arms.
How the mosque massacre will affect the effort remains uncertain. It is definitely providing the gun prohibition lobby a new platform from which to argue in favor of banning so-called “semiautomatic assault rifles.” Already down in New Zealand, CNN has reported that some gun owners have voluntarily surrendered semiautomatic firearms to police in anticipation of new gun control regulations from the government.
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern told a press gathering Monday that there will be new “reform” efforts within a few days.
