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A national constitution ought to reflect a society’s fundamental values by defining a set of legal principles that can be periodically adjusted in order to reflect a society’s changing mores, culture and technology. By that standard, our Constitution is woefully out of date.
From the electoral college to gun rights to the hilariously archaic right to refuse to quarter troops in your home and the $20 threshold for a civil jury trial, the U.S. Constitution contains many head-scratching relics of an America we wouldn’t recognize. Living in the age of the musket, James Madison might not be so quick to argue for legalizing the AR-15, assuming that a well-regulated state militia was still a thing.
A work of genius the U.S. Constitution is not. It is almost impossible to amend — it is in fact the hardest to amend in the world. The immutability of the document is highlighted by the inability of the world’s most powerful democracy to enshrine a right as basic as gender equality, a principle that the vast majority of other countries, even dictatorships and authoritarian regimes, have managed to include (at least in theory) in their founding charters.
We haven’t successfully amended the Constitution in half a century — and barely then, which is really weird. “Most liberal democracies — including the nice, stable ones in Western Europe — amend their constitutions with great frequency,” University of Chicago law professor Eric Posner pointed out in 2014: “Germany amends its Basic Law almost once per year, and France a bit more than once every two years. Indeed, most states in the U.S. amend their constitutions every couple of years.”
Because Americans are saturated from birth to death by “living document” propaganda about the eternal majestic genius of the Founding Fathers, the constitution is treated like a sacred stone tablet personally engraved by God rather than what it is: a 234-year-old train wreck. From progressive Democrats to right-wing Republicans there is no thought, much less political will, to suggest that this relic might be altered to better serve 21st-century Americans.
We may not see its flaws, but everyone else does. As recently as 1987, most countries’ basic legal charters were directly or indirectly inspired by the American constitution. Not anymore. “Among the world’s democracies,” a 2012 NYU law review study found, “constitutional similarity to the United States has clearly gone into free fall.” When a new country like East Timor or South Sudan emerges on the world stage now, their legal experts look for guidance to the more modern constitutions like those of Canada, India, South Africa and New Zealand. The right to travel, the presumption of innocence and entitlement to food, education and health care — standard rights around the globe — are absent from the U.S. Constitution. The climate crisis should prompt consideration of a constitutional right of nature, as several countries have.
If we’re a vibrant democracy, we should act like one. We ought to ask ourselves: If we were writing a Constitution today from scratch, what would it look like?
Would a contemporary U.S. constitution include an electoral college system? Perhaps. We might join Burundi, Estonia, India, Madagascar, Myanmar, Pakistan, Trinidad and Tobago and Vanuatu, which have electoral college systems.
But probably not. It’s far likelier that popular opinion would prevail and that we’d choose our leaders the same way most of the world does. A 55% to 43% majority of Americans told a January 2021 Pew poll that they would prefer the president to be elected by popular vote.
Lefties’ complaints about the not-guilty verdict in the recently concluded Kyle Rittenhouse trial prompted me to start thinking about the question of what a 2021 Constitutional Convention would come up with. Legal experts weren’t surprised that Rittenhouse got away with killing two men and wounding a third. By every credible account, the jury followed Wisconsin law.
“America today: you can break the law, carry around weapons built for a military, shoot and kill people, and get away with it,” said California Governor Gavin Newsom. Well, yes. Not because the jury messed up but because they followed the law — which means the law is the problem.
If you don’t think the law should allow a 17-year-old kid to take an AR-15 military-style assault rifle to a riot, play junior vigilante supercop and wind up shooting three people, I agree. The root of that craziness, however, is not to yell vague complaints about “the state of America;” it’s to repeal or amend the antiquated Second Amendment.
The constitutional right to keep and bear arms is a uniquely American oddity. Only two other nations besides the U.S. have one: Mexico and Guatemala. And those two countries’ gun laws are nowhere as liberal as ours. Mexico bans the sale or possession of automatic or semi-automatic firearms entirely; there’s only gun shop in the whole country, on a heavily guarded army base in Mexico City. Guatemalans can buy semi-automatic weapons, handguns, rifles and shotguns but only with a permit that is hard to get. And ammunition is rationed.
A brand-new United States freshly liberated from the yoke of British colonialism probably wouldn’t draft a Second Amendment as we know it. We’re no longer a rural society; 95% of Americans don’t hunt, and guns have gotten bigger and scarier.
One of three Americans own a gun, so guns would probably remain legal. But there would be regulations limiting firepower and some sort of licensing regime. Following endless mass shootings, Americans currently favor stronger gun-control laws by a 64% to 28% margin, according to an April 2021 Politico poll. “Almost half — 46 percent — said that limiting gun ownership was more important than protecting the Second Amendment, while 44 percent said that gun ownership rights were a higher priority,” reported The Hill. If gun rights made it into our new constitution, odds are that such a provision would be far weaker than what we have now.
But the Second Amendment, and all the rest, remains impervious to change, which itself won’t change until we start asking ourselves: Why?
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Excellent point, Mr Rall! It is to such moral guiding lights as East Timor and South Sudan that we should look to find our way in this new vibrant age. Thanks ever so.
The ONLY country which REALLY has Freedom of Speech is America.
For starters: likely without Free Speech.
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I could go on this article – but it was sooo dumb I don’t have the will.
Loved Ted’s take on Shithead and Cheney Show years ago, but had no idea he was insane. Sad.
I assume this is satire.
So Rall thinks the government is still obeying the Constitution?? LOL. They must keep this guy around here for comic relief.
No, it’s Emperor Fauci who’s in control. Whatever he says goes, and Constitution be damned. Dissent not allowed! After all, we can’t let people question “the science”, can we? Of course not! Anything less than complete submission to authority is a threat to “our democracy”! Why, oh why can’t the peasants see that?
Ted Rall is ignorant of how many countries have significant gun ownership, and how strongly gun ownership reduces crime in violent societies, per clear statistics.
Israel is somewhat similar to the US in private gun ownership, with a long record of private citizen carry, tho regrettably favouring its Jewish population. Not only Canada but Continental Europe have many tens of millions of private handguns, shotguns and rifles, a fact which USA people never seem to know. Europe has more bureaucracy in buying them, generally no carry ability … but e.g. some French farmers have immense arsenals. Resource for global firearms ownership statistics.
https://www.gunpolicy.org/
At least before 2020’s BLM crime upsurge, USA and Canada – the biggest gun-owning nations – were amongst the top 4 lowest-murder-rate countries in the Americas, along with Cuba and Chile. Mexico’s is 3x the USA etc. Brazil, murder rate 5x USA, has significantly lowered crime and murder as right-wing Bolsonaro made gun ownership easier. 45 of the 50 most murderous cities in the world are in the Americas – most in ‘high gun control’ countries – the other 5 in South Africa.
Ted Rall seems to prefer how in much of Central & South America, many murders are done with knives & clubs, with disarmed civilians having no effective defence against gang violence. Once a society is significantly violent – and these are mostly ‘multi-cultural’ ones – private gun ownership reduces crimes. Before migration waves, Europe was quite low-crime despite huge amounts of guns, ditto Canada … a Ted Rall ‘mystery’.
Sure, let’s write a new Constitution. And while we’re rewriting, let’s do the tax law also. And maybe we can get Microsoft to rewrite Windows for the modern world with modern languages.
And less complicated it would seem, maybe someone can fix all the pot holes in the neighborhood live in.
The only idea I agree with here is that the Constitution is outdated (actually I believe it has always been nothing but a sales job for a centralized government). Thomas Jefferson suggested constitutions have a shelf life of about 19 years.
Will Rall ever NOT want to infringe upon our rights? What would be enough change for him?
Personally, I don’t want to live in that retard’s world, if he gets what he wants. Nor does anyone I know in real life.
The problem is how much the country has been “Bidenized”:
Video Link
Retards don’t satire.
– The overarching purpose of a costitution is safeguarding against both
government overreach and mob rule i. e. exactly what Ted has in mind.
Jefferson on his return from Paree had to freaking force the Bill of Rights
on an unwilling ConCon.
If Mr. Rall wants his pipi to be equal all there is is the Preamble –
the Fourteenth is null and void (together with all attendant Sibbyl Rites and other
penumbrae; ah, Strict Constructionism 😛 !).
– “Germany” is an occupation zone, not a country, and can therefore have
no constitution (and like most European countries de facto reserves the right to
self-defense to Jews and the like).
– France´s political systems (yes, plural) have a notoriously short half-life i.e.
it usually only takes a few years for them to get sick of one –
it is controlled chaos and has ever been thusly
(i.e. they keep desperately trying to resuscitate the revolutionary gloire).
If Ted doesn’t like the old constitution he may be relieved to discover it has been ignored by the rulers of the U.S. for decades.
Mr Rall mistakenly cites Mexico & Guatemala gun laws to be emulated by the US. Yeah because the murder by gun rates of those 2 countries are so much better than well Venezuela & Columbia.
A better idea is to publish lists of all the anti-2nd A citizens & see how that works out for them.
Fifty-five of the nation’s wealthiest landowners, merchants and slaveholders met in Philadelphia in 1787 with the announced intention to merely revise, not replace, the Articles of Confederation, under which the United States had won its independence from England. They would then send these changes to each of the state legislatures for revision and ratification. Instead, in secret session, from which reporters and observers were barred, the delegates threw out America’s first constitution altogether and replaced it with a strong central government in which all the real power would be in their hands. They then sent the proposal to select state ratifying conventions where only a tiny number of hand-picked delegates were allowed to accept or reject their stunning coup d’etat.
Almost to a man, these same powerful men wrote the states’ new constitutions, replacing their colonial era charters. They imposed so many qualifications on voting that some 90% of Americans were denied a voice in the new republic. In the first national election of 1788-89, only 43,782 men out of a diverse U.S. population of nearly four million were able to cast votes for the electors who would actually select the President.
These men feared genuine popular democracy. Their quarrel with England was largely about replacing the mother country’s hereditary aristocracy with an arriviste aristocracy of new money. Read the Federalist articles for confirmation of their fear and loathing of their fellow citizens, who deviously “labour under all the hardships of life, and secretly sigh for a more equal distribution of its blessings”, according to Madison. They constructed a central government strong enough to serve their needs, but too weak to ever place meaningful limits on their local privilege should “the common welfare” ever require it. In the mendacious Virginia and Kentucky resolutions of 1798, they established the doctrine of “states rights” to create a mechanism to sabotage the will of the people, should they ever be able to vote in a genuine champion. The federal congress they created was intended to be what it remains today, a roadblock to developing a coherent national policy to which all special interests would be subject. Instead, the federal establishment provides opportunities for ambitious local grifters to promote their own advancement, through special interest projects initiated for the benefit of the nation’s owner class, still calling the shots behind the façade of “freedom.”
Israel is apartheid, no blacks, the population is armed to the teeth. Rall would LOVE for the U.S. Constitution and the 2nd amendment to be clipped because only Whites would obey, leaving the blacks as the only armed component of the U.S. population armed and enabled. Rall is, theoretically, White. Anyone who advocates clipping my right to arms deserves a home invasion of orcs in his own living room, a real takeover, to get a taste of the race war THEY, virtuous whites like Rall, enabled. A liberal is just an American who hasn’t been mugged yet. But see, Rall lives in a safe, anti-orc community and has no sense of blacks’ criminal depravity. He couldn’t care less about the rest of those who can’t get out. Only a home invasion wakes these people up, not that I’m wishing, only saying that’s the only way.
Exactly like 94% White Waukesha, who was failed by its courts and woke black police chief, letting a mad cap invade their ‘living room’, killing many. There are other issues with Rall’s horseshit article but the 2nd amendment Rall would like to kill sells his whole article. NyTimes or WashPost could hire him right out of here.
The problem, as always with people subject to US indoctrination, is fixation on constitutions. If you get state obligations and commitments right, the constitution or laws fall into place.
If you try to change the constitution CIA is going to hijack the process and stick in provisions for your natural-law right to arbitrary detention, torture, extermination, and medical experimentation. Just shitcan your bullshit constitution.
This here’s all you need and all you got.
https://ohchr.org/EN/ProfessionalInterest/Pages/UniversalHumanRightsInstruments.aspx
If you want more centralized government, which would lead to permanent democrat tyranny, all you need do is eliminate the Electoral College. No more moving to independent Red States to escape the ignorant commie Mob. We should be going the other way: Secession!
You lefties, through the Seattle’s city council, tried rewritting the city’s charter, to create a socialist paradise. Instead, you’ve destroyed a charming city, creating an unlivable city where the parasites are allowed to plunder, live on sidewalks, and create massive amounts of garbage and human waste all over the city. You lefties have failed in every socialist experiment you’ve run, in NY City, Detroit, Baltimore, Seattle, Portland, etc. Pretty much every coastal leftist city. In schools, corporations, and the media, you’ve terrorized workers in work environoments with Red Guard struggle sessions and “cancleations” of people.. You would figure you lefties would show a modicum of remorse and humility over your failed ideas. But, instead you propose to continue your failed thinking by revising the Constitution. Maybe, you could do everyone a favor, Ted Rall, by emigrating to Venezuela, or Seattle, or Baltimore, where you can live in the socialist paradise that you want to create. You have zero credibility, guy.
Ted is repeating the usual leftist lies. Sorry Ted, but Rittenhouse shot three scumbags who attacked him. He deserves a medal for what he did. I suppose Ted thinks Darrell Brooks up in Waukesha was a fine upstanding citizen.
Leftists really need to experience the consequences of their mental illness. I think Ted ought to be forced to live in a black neighborhood with a lot of active BLM types, house and feed a family of illegal migrants, and if he is married or has a girlfriend then she needs to convert to Islam and experience their views on feminism. And live strictly without fossil fuel.
Au contraire …
it is the EC that casts in concrete the Duopoly, in essence a kabuki with both
sides controlled by Jewish “donors”. What has it ever done to protect your “rights”?
(I know that´s the purported intent – dream on)
Do away with the EC and there will be five (actual) parties before (((they))) can
say hah-nuk-kah (that still leaves the problem of the media –
smash their monopolies also).
Secession will be so much faster and cleaner 😀
If you are not aware, the German Constitutional Court ruled in 1956 that the “Old Reich” – the Wiemar Republic – still existed because the military, not the government surrendered. That ruling has been rendered subsequently, on at least one occasion. So, yes indeed, Germany is truly an occupation zone.
In wonderful gun-controlled Mexico and El Salvador and Guatemala etc. the per-capita homicide rate is many time higher the the heavily-armed United States. In fact, the United States ranks only 74th. in homicide rate, even though the 73 higher ranking nations all have much more stringent gun control laws. So the whole premise is rubbish.
What cause a high homicide rate is not lack of gun control, but lack of social stability. In countries where the average person can earn a decent living through honest labor, crime rates are generally low. In countries that are screaming hells of poverty and misery, things don’t usually go well.
There have been two periods in US history when the crime rate shot up. One starting in 1888, and the other, in 1965. That’s when the rich opened the borders to cheap-labor immigration, and crushed the ability of the bottom half of the working class to earn a decent living. Again, it’s not the immigrants per se: it is the deliberate attack on the working class by flooding the market for labor.
Mr. Rall is welcome to move to wonderful gun-controlled South Africa where he may experience a homicide rate approximately seven times higher than the US rate.
Ted Rall used to be pretty good, and he was even, despite his left leanings, the object of considerable nastiness on the part of the liberal mafia.
It’s truly a pity to see that he’s lost his bearings. TDS has damaged the intellect of many once-good people…
Everything this imbecile lists as bad is actually a very good thing.
It is difficult to comprehend how stupid he is.
You object to not having “gender equality” in The Constitution? WTF even is “gender equality?”
Who ever said the genders weren’t equal? And why would you need to put that in a constitution?
All of Ted’s points fail.
But it’s difficult to figure why he would even make such arguments.
I fail to see how, without the EC to block them, so many viable third parties would magically appear like flowers in the spring. Wouldn’t Big Money still control the sick-making process? They surely wouldn’t want any young whippersnappers, like libertarians and greens, raining on their parade. The system would still be rigged against the common man in any case.
“What has the EC ever done to protect my rights?” For one, my normally Blue State, and a few others, went for Trump in 2016, saving the country from crooked war hawk Hillary. No EC, and Hillary would have been coronated. Perish the thought!
“Rittenhouse shot” and killed, two-of-three “scumbags who attacked him.” And Kenosha and our country is a better place for it. The understandable grief of momma Huber and momma Rosenbaum notwithstanding.
We need many more Kyle Rittenhouses to rid our country of the plague of degenerate vermin that our overly-tolerant society has allowed/caused to proliferate.
Then, some structural features of our “social contract” need to be amended to prevent the continued growth/spread of the cancer.
Respect for human dignity … yes. Tolerance for human savagery/degeneracy … no.
Time for tough love.
Going to have to jump on the “Pile on Ted” train. All he means by “The constitution is almost impossible to amend” is that it’s almost impossible to change it to enshrine his own personal policy preferences. Thankfully so.
Gender equality, as example – wonderful as a non-specific ideal, unworkable as to a legal framework.
I can’t say I’ve paid much attention to Ted’s writings but I’d guess he was on board with the Trump as fascist meme. Let’s envision 2024 where Trump returns to the white house and the republicans gain control of both houses of congress. Repubs already control a large majority of state houses. The idea of an easily amended constitution should fill Ted with terror.
I am aware … the BVG ruled that as long as Poles and Russians occupy
East Germany no one has standing to sign a peace treaty on behalf
of the Reich (“in the borders of 1937”) – so they could not be forced to
sign away East Germany.
Pure genius – but the resulting legal situation is a hoot 😀
While we´re at it, the Poles again fully expect Eur800B in reparations
(while this explains some of their recent behavior it only means they are
big-time shooting themselves in the clit – again).
Like a windsock!
One of the men Rittenhouse killed was a convicted child rapist. If you’re against Kyle, you’re on the side of a man who anally raped young boys. Let that sink in, then find another case to rant about.
Keep in mind that he’s here only because the publisher felt desperate enough to fill the lightweight, self-described Progressive roster spot previously held by Tom Engelhardt.
There have been exceptions, but most of Mr. Rall’s pieces are as deeply considered as the Thursday night spouting of a guy on his third beer in a freshman dorm. Just read the first, internally contradictory sentence:
Nor does anything served up after that word salad suggest that Mr. Rall understands that the purpose of a constitution is to impede other – and especially democratic – means of governance.
Ted Rall is not insane, he’s just a leftist moron. It’s amazing to see Unz publish him as an alternative, marginalized voice. As much as he poses as an anti-corporatist, his views are standard Democratic mainstream crap.
“We need many more Kyle Rittenhouses to rid our country…”
So I take it you are volunteering? Nah, you’re just hoping someone other than YOU will do it. Smart on your part, as far as not potentially putting your life in jeopardy, but in the end it doesn’t solve the problem.
That’s a non sequitur. The musket was the most advanced firearm of its day. Why would someone who was in favor of 2A regarding the most advanced gun of his times necessarily be against 2A for even better guns? It’s not as if people were arguing, “Yeah, 2A is cool, I mean those things can only manage one shot every few minutes.”
The vast majority of people (99.99999%) alive today in the US of A are way to ignorant, immature and just plain stupid to be able to write never mind modify one of the greatest Governmental Documents every written in all of human history. This includes the Dufus who wrote the above article.
There is nothing wrong with the Constitution the watering the Tree of Liberty won’t fix.
Mr Rall is quite incisive. Much of the constitution is anachronistic: states, the electoral college, the 2nd Amendment, the 14th Amendment, most everything about the Senate, most everything about the Judiciary. There is nothing in the Constitution, for example, that gives courts the power of judicial review. That was made up of whole cloth by Justice Marshall and should be eliminated in a new document. It is also apparent that the First Amendment was misunderstood. It was not supposed to create religious freedom at all. It merely was supposed to insure that religion was regulated by states, not the federal government. The same with free speech. No Federal Rules but state rules would be fine.
I would appear on one point to contradict myself because I say that states are anachronistic but that states were supposed to have more authority (which we have stripped from them). That contradiction is actually the source of my point about states being anachronistic. If we plan to use the 14th Amendment to strip states of autonomy to do things like ban some religions, then there is no point to having states at all. If we truly wish to have states exercise meaningful sovereignty, then the 14th Amendment has to go and so do things like the 1st and 2nd Amendments (at least as applied to states).
At the moment we have a bad mix of wrongheaded ideas. Either make the states actually sovereign, or eliminate them entirely.
Thomas Jefferson had personally aquired a silent, rapid fire rifle, the Girandoni repeating rifle (ca 20 shots in 1 minute) sometime in the late 1700s. Later he lent it to the 1803-6 Lewis and Clark Expedition, which widely ranged raw western US territory for three years, with natives later known for their ferocious behaviors, without being wiped out.
They had no indian troubles once the “magic” Girandoni rifle was demonstrated to each new indian group, hostile or not. This is a 1700s assault weapon that started the winning of the West.
Video Link
Those people that say our Constitution and Bill of Rights is obsolete because of modern firearms etc are complete ignorant asshats when one considers the established commercial production for use in Europe and personal Jeffersonian acquaintance, of the Girandoni rifle.
The 13th and 14th Amendment were never ratified, because they was passed in 1865-68 when the South was under military rule. One of the conditions on their rejoining the Union, was to ratify the highly partisan 14th amendment. The South voted against it, so the North passed a Reconstruction Act that forced them, under military force, to rebalance their legislatures with freed illiterate slaves (white men were not fully given the right to vote and hold office). But, even in the north, the states still refused to ratify it, with only 26 of 28 needed states ratifying it. It was never properly ratified, but implemented by the lefties (Republicans then) who aggressively ruled Congress during the Civil War. They were the same bunch that pushed the U.S. into a Civil War.. To this day, the Supreme Court has shied away from examining its passage, because it was not legitimate but has become a key part of case law. Many academic papers on law have openly talk about this lack of legitimacy.
Well yes … Napoleon cosidered it so evil he had every Austrian sniper caught with one summarily executed 😀
Scratch the surface of a leftist, and you instantly get a western-centric smug dude. Just like today with the pandemic vax mandate suddenly Australian abos and French colonial possession blacks suddenly don’t get to decide anything.
The white man’s burden, mutated and toxic, is back with a vengeance, and this time it’s a tranny-promoting progressive burden.
Thank you, Ted Rall, for one of the best arguments in favor of rule by mob, organized crime and tyrannical central government I’ve ever read.
That said, the above was merely implied not explicitly explained. When next you expand on this topic I suggest you spell these elements out further, since clearly it’s where your utopian wish list ends up.
All social systems depend upon goodwill of all classes therein; we currently have lost that mutual goodwill. It is unlikely that any constitution can bring that into being. There are forces other than the documentary at play which determine whether or not a society can be the locus of a civilisation or dark age devolution. We are now heading rapidly in the latter direction.
I don’t find anything in your piece that either acknowledges this or offers the slightest remedy.
LOL. I recall reading another poster’s observation on Poles some time ago. I believe it was that stepping on rakes is their national pastime .
Yeah, agree. I mean, I remember when Ted Rall was opposed to illegal immigration because it crushed workers. That was the traditional liberal/progressive view. Then that went away, and he became full open borders…
As Bernie Sanders said before he also was broken, open borders is not left, it’s an extreme right-wing Koch brothers scam.
I still respect Ted Rall, but yes, he has finally started to crack. I imagine that if I ever met him in person I wouldn’t like him, but I always admired his crankiness and willingness to take on authority. He lost a lot of commercial opportunities doing that. How many other go-along-to-get-along journalistic whores can say that?
But the pressures that the oligarchy can bring to bear on an independent thinker are massive, and in the end nobody is superhuman.
Ted Rall, iconoclast, clear thinker, ally of the common man, RIP.
“..,the hilariously archaic right to refuse to quarter troops in your home…”
I’m sure, Mr. Rall, that you are willing, nay, anxious, to have troops quartered in your home.
The passage pertains to a measure called dragonnade
(because dragoons were the preferred tool), very popular in Europe,
a punitive action to bring a restive population to heel.
In the Sibbyl Rites Era ™ it has been replaced by joggerade
(read: Section 8 violates the Third)..
No one volunteers to become a target and find themselves forced into a self defense scenario as Rittenhouse was. You’re simply acting like a leftist moron.
The 2A applied to the states from the beginning. The militias belonged to the states, not the FedGov. As a consequence, the states have never had the authority to keep arms from anyone. It is the right of the people to bear arms that is addressed in the amendment, not that of the states.
You’re hilarious. The Koch Brothers have always been leftist. Go back and look at the nonsense they have supported. Saying they were extreme right wing outs you as a complete ignoramus.
Sates at the nation’s founding at plenary authority and could do anything. The point of the constitution was to regulate federal action. It is only the 14th Amendment that applies the 2nd Amendment to the states. States always could ban guns. Indeed, the point of early gun control was for racist whites to ban black people from having guns. Much of what passes for litigation over constitutional law is in fact a sorting out state versus federal power. The recent Supreme Court debate about abortion exists only because of the 14th Amendment. Absent the 14th Amendment, it would be a non issue. The constitution as drafted was designed to authorize limited federal conduct–as the states previously had unlimited powers. States gave up most foreign policy (you will note under the constitution states maintain limited authority to go to war). Thus a revised constitution either should eliminate the 14th Amendment or it should eliminate states.