'Newsroom' Star Jeff Daniels: Second Amendment from a 'Different Time,' Needs Updating

Appearing on Piers Morgan Live on July 9, actor Jeff Daniels said the 2nd Amendment was from a “different time” and needs universal background checks added to make it apropos for our day and time. 

Here’s how Daniels said it:

I’m one of the those guys that goes back to the Second Amendment and just goes, ‘You know what, it was a different time and now we’re into Sandy Hook and the–you know, all of that and whatever happened between George Zimmerman and Trayvon Martin that night, they only know. One of them had a gun and they’re real easy to get and I’m one of the guys that would go…90% of Americans said background checks, let’s do a better job of policing it, and I know the gun lobby–the gun enthusiasts get all bent out of shape about that, but it’s a different world now.

With all respect to The Newsroom star, he misses two important points with this rant:

Number one–gun control has always been about control–from the time that slaves were denied guns in the Antebellum South (so they could be controlled) to the Democrats attempts to deny guns to free blacks in the Reconstruction South once the war was over (so the free blacks could be controlled as the slaves were), to the the Soviet Union’s disarmament of its citizenry and Adolf Hitler’s disarmament of the Jews. The knowledge of these and myriad other examples are what gnaws at the consciences of gun owners and freedom lovers when politicians and actors begin pushing for more gun control.

Number two–If Daniels is sure 90 percent of Americans support changing what he sees as an outdated amendment, there is a process for changing it–it’s the constitutional amendment process set forth by our Founding Fathers.

All Daniels, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV), Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), and Senator Joe Manchin (D-WV) need to do is encourage those 90 percent of Americans to start the process. Once a majority of the population in two-thirds of the 50 states votes to change the amendment, then the House and Senate can take up the matter. If it gets the support of two-thirds of House members and the support of two-thirds of the Senate, then it only has to clear three-quarters of all state legislatures in the country and as easy as that it’s changed.

Follow AWR Hawkins on Twitter @AWRHawkins