The Second Amendment: What Would It Say About Today's Shots?

 In light of the recent shooting at Oxford High School, I decided to get down to the fundamental level of the Second Amendment. I wanted to see what really was such a huge obstacle to allowing students to not fear facing gunfire at any given moment throughout their school day. It seems like such an irrational fear, but with a shooting happening so close to us, so many people have begun to adopt this thought process more and more, including myself. On Wednesday night, I remember not trusting a word about the results of police investigations and dreading going to school the next day.

So what did the Second Amendment have to say about this chaos? No matter which credible sources I visited, they all seemed to say the same thing: that the Second Amendment was intended to protect the rights of the people against a tyrannical or violent government, ie. in the situation that martial law develops and becomes corrupt. For example, Encyclopedia Britannica explains that the Amendment was “a constitutional check on congressional power” in the form of “[organizing, arming, and disciplining] the federal militia” (Charles, “Second Amendment”).  In what way, shape, or form does this allow guns to needlessly fall into the hands of 15-year-olds? How have we allowed this fundamental belief to morph into a system that has allowed firearms to be used by irresponsible individuals so much and so often such that too many innocent children have died? There must be something we can do to keep this from happening. Of course, such a big change and careful maneuvering so that the Second Amendment is not violated will take a long time. But what have we failed to do? What have we truly succeeded in accomplishing? 

I remember sitting down and thinking about how to connect this to what we talked about last week in class. Then, I thought about Langston Hughes’s poem at the beginning of A Raisin in the Sun.

“What happens to a dream deferred?

Does it dry up

Like a raisin in the sun?...

Or does it explode?”

Before the Oxford shooting, the urge to protect our own school from a shooting wasn’t as strong. Now, though, this dream has become revitalized in the eyes of many Troy High School students. In other words, it really has exploded. I doubt school days will be the same as they were before, because this goal shouldn’t have to be a dream at all.

https://www.britannica.com/topic/Second-Amendment