CNN op-ed calls for repeal of the Second Amendment: ‘Let's just get rid of it’

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Longtime liberal radio host Bill Press wrote an op-ed Thursday calling for the Second Amendment to be outright repealed. 

"The only effective way to deal with the Second Amendment is to repeal it — and then replace it with something that makes sense in a civilized society," Press wrote for CNN in an article titled "There’s no way to fix the Second Amendment. Let’s just get rid of it."

"I'm hardly the first person to say that the Second Amendment has been a disaster for this country. In fact, two Supreme Court justices — justices appointed by Republican presidents — have said as much," he added. 

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"There’s no way to fix the Second Amendment. Let’s just get rid of it," radio host Bill Press wrote.

Press cited former Chief Justice Warren Burger, who in 1991 told PBS that "If I were writing the Bill of Rights now, there wouldn't be any such thing as the Second Amendment." 

Burger, who also presided over Roe v. Wade, is quoted as calling the Second Amendment "one of the greatest pieces of fraud" in American history. 

Press reiterated the claim and expounded on it. He wrote, "Indeed, you only have to read the Second Amendment to see what a fraud it's become."

He claimed that "there's no way you can logically leap" from the text of the Second Amendment "to the unfettered right of any citizen to buy as many guns — and any kind of gun — that they want, without the government being able to do anything about it."

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With loaded firearms in hand and flags all around, people gather for a five-mile Open Carry March for Freedom organized by Florida Gun Supply in Inverness, Florida. (Reuters/Chris Tilley)

"It's clear from the wording of the Second Amendment itself that it has nothing to do with individual gun ownership; nothing to do with self-defense; and nothing to do with assault weapons. The amendment speaks, not to the rights of well-armed individual citizens, but only to citizens as members of a group, a ‘well regulated militia,’" he wrote.

"The founders saw no need to mention guns in the original Constitution. As many constitutional scholars and American historians have shown, the Second Amendment was added later by James Madison as part of a deal to secure the support of Patrick Henry and other White racist Virginians for confirmation of the Constitution."

Press cited Carol Anderson, an academic who "describes the ‘anti-Blackness’ at the heart of the Second Amendment." 

Sen. Ted Cruz speaks during the National Rifle Association's annual meeting on May 27, 2022, in Houston. (AP Photo/Michael Wyke)

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He wrote that "the amendment has nothing to do with self-defense or allowing ownership of any kind of gun."

Press criticized Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, as a "gun worshipper" for supporting the Second Amendment, which he claimed enabled the Uvalde shooter. "We are a sick nation indeed, if we allow that idiocy to stand," he wrote. 

"We are condemned to more and more mass killings until we do the right thing: Stop arguing about the Second Amendment — and just get rid of it."