The Second Amendment of the United States Constitution reads: “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”

I think it’s time to recognize that in 1791, when that Constitutional amendment was passed into law, our Founding Fathers were living in a very different world with a very different notion of what a citizen might have available to arm himself or herself with.

It’s time to repeal the Second Amendment.

The number of mass shootings that have occurred in recent years is appalling. This is just a sampling:

• 32 killed, 12 injured at a college in Blacksburg, Va.;

• 14 dead, 22 injured at a San Bernardino, Calif., community center;

• 12 killed, 58 injured at an Aurora, Colo., movie theater;

• 20 children and six adults killed at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut;

• Nine dead at a church in Charleston, S.C.;

• 13 killed, 32 injured at Fort Hood, Texas; and

• 12 killed, three injured at the Washington Navy Yard.

It horrifies me to realize that, as I researched the deadliest mass killings that have occurred in recent years this week, there were so many that I found myself saying, more than once, “Oh, yeah. I forgot about that one.”

None of these mass shootings was instigated by a well-regulated militia. None had anything to do with maintaining the security of a free state. None of them was even in defense of someone’s family. All were acts of terror, anger, revenge or mental instability.

Each time there is another shooting, a discussion about gun rights ensues, and each time the National Rifle Association exerts its powerful political pressure, effectively shutting down any legislative action.

On Monday, despite polls showing a large majority of Americans favor stricter gun laws, the U.S. Senate voted to reject legislation that would have made it more difficult for anyone on the no-fly list to purchase a firearm and would have required more extensive background checks for the acquisition of gun licenses.

When Omar Mateen opened fire on unarmed patrons at The Pulse nightclub in Orlando June 12, it was the worst mass shooting in U.S. history – 49 dead, 53 wounded.

What will it take for us to finally realize it is time to take action to get semi-automatic weapons out of the hands of anyone who cares to own them?

When our Founding Fathers wrote the Constitution’s Bill of Rights, citizens could arm themselves with a musket or a flintlock pistol. Users of these guns could load one musket ball at a time. Reloading the next round would take minutes.

Compare that to the AR-15 used in recent mass shootings. Forty-five rounds can be fired in a single minute. When fired, these rounds travel at a much higher velocity than the musket round and with much greater accuracy.

I doubt the writers of the Second Amendment foresaw or would sanction the kind of carnage we are seeing automatic weapons create today. We must stop thinking of everything they wrote to be somehow sacrosanct. It is outdated and irrelevant to the lives we are living today. We must begin to frame this part of the Constitution to reflect the world we live in the 21st century.

We must not let someone else’s idea of what the “right to bear arms” means to keep us from feeling safe when we go out to a club, send our children to school, attend a party at a community center, visit a movie theater or go to work.

With a Second Amendment so outdated and vague, leaving us to broad and conflicting interpretations, we now find ourselves at the mercy of a gun lobby that, for example, effectively sealed the fate of gun legislation in December 2015, when the U.S. Senate voted against a bill that would prohibit the sale of firearms to anyone on a terrorist watch list.

Perhaps the best solution is to just trash the original amendment and create one that, while protecting our right to bear arms, is more relevant to our lives today.

It would not be the first time a revision to the Constitution is approved. Slavery was protected in the original document, then abolished decades later. Prohibition was repealed by the 21st Amendment. Voting rights and equal rights for women were addressed. All of these were reflections of an evolving American culture.

And now, it is time, before another mass shooting occurs, to repeal the Second Amendment and begin to rethink the regulation of firearms.

Mateen purchased his military-style assault rifle a little more than a week before shooting 102 people. Perhaps if we act quickly, another individual with hate or terror in his heart will not have that opportunity.

Linda Wojciechowski

associate editor

Catasauqua Press