After the tragedy in Parkland, Florida, there has been a lot of talk about repealing the Second Amendment (right to bear arms). I believe the whole conversation is a waste of time not because the victims are wrong but because the process of amending the Constitution is almost impossible.
The framers of the Constitution knew that it would need to be changed as time went on. But they did not want it to be easy so they intentionally made the process difficult. In the 228 years since the Constitution was ratified (1789) there have only been 27 amendments added and 10 were ratified in 1791 (these are known as the Bill of Rights). Only one amendment was ever repealed (the 18th amendment, Prohibition). By the way, an amendment is repealed by adding another amendment. That is why the 18th Amendment is still on the books.The last time an amendment was added was in 1992 (prohibits Congress from giving themselves pay raises).
The first step is to actually propose the amendment. This is typically done through a committee in the House of Representatives. When that committee votes to present the proposed amendment the house and the senate vote on the amendment. There must be a two-thirds acceptance of the proposed amendment in both the House of Representatives (278 out of 435) and Senate (66 out of 100). Once the amendment has the votes, the proposed amendment is sent to the governors of each state. The governor of each state will then put the proposed amendment to a vote within the state legislature. In order for the proposed amendment to be ratified, three-fourths of the states need to approve (that is 38 states).
You might be asking yourself, "Hey, where is the President in all this?". Believe it or not, the President has nothing to do with the process. He can have an opinion or suggest an amendment, but he does not vote for and cannot veto a ratified amendment.
So what does this mean for the chances of repealing the Second Amendment (whether you are for or against does not matter here)? It is very unlikely that both the House of Representatives and Senate would ever have enough votes to push a proposed amendment to repeal the Second Amendment. Believe it or not, there are a lot Democrats that do not believe in gun confiscation. They just want to make it tougher to get guns. The other problem is getting 38 states to ratify the appeal. Most states actually have very liberal gun laws. Even very left leaning states like Vermont and New Hampshire have permitless carry laws and, believe it or not, Texas is not the most gun friendly state according to GunsandAmmo.com.
In short, talk of repealing the Second Amendment is just that: talk. It will never happen. The debate is just dividing people. It would be best to find real solutions.
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References:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Constitution
http://www.gunsandammo.com/second-amendment/best-states-for-gun-owners-2017/
Pictures courtesy of:
FloridaToday.com
Newsweek.com
MichiganRadio.org
Slideserve.com