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Vanity Fair: “Let’s Repeal the Second Amendment”

Melissa Melton
January 5, 2013

Yesterday Kurt Eichenwald, contributing editor at Vanity Fair Magazine, wrote an article that did not beat around the bush about his agenda: “Kurt Eichenwald: Let’s Repeal the Second Amendment [1].”

Vanity Fair HeadlineScreen Capture.

Filed under politics, the piece begins with Eichenwald saying “gun-rights folks” have consistently tended to “whine” that “it’s politicizing tragedy to talk about” gun control in relation to the Sandy Hook shooting. So instead, Eichenwald mentions several other shooting incidents and proclaims, “Enough. We talk now. And my position is going to be direct: America needs to repeal the Second Amendment.”

While banker-run The Economist [2] proclaimed, “If you want to be safer, change the Constitution” in its anti-Second Amendment propaganda piece a few weeks ago, this Vanity Fair article literally gets right to the point with several arguments against our Bill of Rights and an outright call to do away with our Second Amendment altogether.

Argument #1: “As written […], the amendment has nothing to do with modern America.”

Eichenwald says this particular amendment has been “twisted and bastardized in ways that could never have been conceived at the time of the nation’s founding.” So the Constitution is automatically time- and technology-dependent?

He makes this claim with the point that Michigan now allows concealed carry in daycare centers. Nevermind that history has shown [3] concealed carriers would actually help to deter a gunman from shooting up a daycare center.

The people’s right shall not be infringed by repealing the Second Amendment or pretending that, because time has passed or technology has improved, it means our rights can now be infringed.

Argument #2: The Second Amendment is “a grammarian’s nightmare.”

While the Second Amendment seems straightforward enough, Eichenwald claims that the actual meaning is “almost impossible to discern,” then notes what he claims is a grammatical issue that changes the meaning:

“Let’s start with the words that now exist. As adopted by Congress, the amendment reads:”




According to Eichenwald, the punctuational difference of a missing comma means the first clause qualifies the second. He also states it is “incomprehensible under any normal rules of grammar.”

Again, this amendment ends with, “the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.” To this end, there is not a grammatical argument. Comma or no comma, the amendment’s conclusion is the main point here as evidenced by the words of our founding fathers, including Thomas Jefferson:

“To disarm the people is the best and most effective way to enslave them.” — George Mason, 1788

“A militia, when properly formed, are in fact the people themselves…and include all men capable of bearing arms.” — Richard Henry Lee, 1788




Argument #3: “A free State” does not mean “A free country.”

The argument here is that the Second Amendment is referring to individual state militias at the time the Constitution was conceived because the “s” in “State” is capitalized. In addition, he believes it is specifically State militia fears of being disarmed by the federal army that this amendment is based on. Supposedly, then, the Bill of Rights was talking about state rights Eichenwald says, “since the states didn’t trust the federal government.” State distrust at the time the Constitution was conceived is worthy of an amendment, but our distrust now somehow isn’t?

Again, this claim ignores the “the people” part at the end of the amendment as referenced above. We’ll get to that part next.

Argument #4: The phrase “the people” does not mean all people. (So it can mean even less people?)

Eichenwald says voters and representatives have passed laws to disallow mentally ill people and convicted felons from legally obtaining guns, so all people having the right to bear arms without exception no longer applies to the Second Amendment anyway.

The bottom line here is that Congress does not actually have the power to contradict the Constitution. It never did. As Stewart Rhodes of Oathkeepers [4] and others have pointed out, when congresspeople take office, they swear an oath to obey — and are thus subordinate to — the Constitution of the United States of America. They do not have the power to pass laws that contradict it. The only way the Constitution may be changed is to amend it.

Conclusion: We need a new amendment and gun owners should be forced to purchase insurance.

Eichenwald then writes his own version of a “new amendment” to replace the Second Amendment once it’s gone. He claims it should read:



So we turn over the power to the government to determine and interpret what “reasonable restrictions” are “deemed necessary” when it comes to our rights to protect ourselves against said tyrannical government?

Eichenwald also goes on to say, “But here’s the restriction I really want to impose: force all gun owners to purchase liability insurance.” Obamacare for gun owners?

So, to recap, we are to give up our rights and trust the government that Eichenwald even admits in argument #3 the state militias did not originally trust when this country was conceived, which is supposedly what caused the Second Amendment’s necessity in the first place?

Eichenwald concludes with this:


Democide [5] — or death by government — has actually killed so many more people than legal gun owners could ever possibly conceive of. Nearly 300 million people were killed by their governments in the 20th century alone. Governments were able to do so primarily when when their people were disarmed.

The Second Amendment is absolutely necessary. We need to be able to protect ourselves from the greatest cause of unnatural death in human history: government.

Thomas Jefferson said it best:


The mainstream media needs to stop inventing meaning against the Constitution and stop helping the establishment dilute and dismantle our rights and the law of our land. The Second Amendment was written to protect us against government tyranny.

Again —

The right. Of the people. To keep and bear arms. Shall. Not. Be. Infringed.


Jakari Jackson and I sat down to discuss this article at-length in relation to the mainstream media’s immediate post-Sandy Hook war on the 2nd Amendment [6] last night: