Another Stab at the Constitution

                 

“ I am not naïve enough to believe that doing away with the Second Amendment would do away with gun violence, but I know firsthand the impact of guns and gun shots on children. This nation was constructed and reconstructed in the aftermath of violent and bloody conflicts. Still, the Framers believed that not only the Constitution, but also the peaceful way the document was created, would penetrate the Americans' minds and change they engaged. The Constitution would be the only weapon needed unless there was an external enemy.”- Melynda Price 

             The quote above from a New York Times article by Melynda Price is speaking on the right to bear arms, the second amendment in the Constitution. Price states that she doesn’t support the second amendment giving citizens the right to bear arms. She makes it clear that she is aware that removing the second amendment will not stop gun violence. She believes the constitution was a document created to change how Americans engage with each other. Price thinks that if we were to do away with or ratify the second amendment that the document would be all Americans need as a weapon regarding domestic issues in the country. 

      I chose this quote from the article because I do think there should be changes to the second amendment regarding the right to bear arms. With recent school shootings and gun violence in communities, revising the second amendment could put an end to some of these senseless shootings in America. The government needs to enforce thorough policies and procedures when trying to obtain legal rights to carry and posses a fire arm. I do not think that removing the second amendment will not stop gun violence but it could put a stop to many of the mass shootings, gun violence and the illegal possession of fire arms. 

       

Trans-National America By: Randolph Bourne

“We are all foreign-born or the descendants of foreign-born, and if distinctions are to be made between us they should rightly be on some other ground than indigenousness. The early colonists came over with motives no less colonial than the later. They did not come to be assimilated in an American melting-pot. They did not come to adopt the culture of the American Indian. They had not the smallest intention of "giving themselves without reservation" to the new country. They came to get freedom to live as they wanted. They came to escape from the stifling air and chaos of the old world; they came to make their fortune in a new land. They invented no new social framework. Rather they brought over bodily the old ways to which they had been accustomed. Tightly concentrated on a hostile frontier, they were conservative beyond belief. Their pioneer daring was reserved for the objective conquest of material resources. In their folkways, in their social and political institutions, they were, like every colonial people, slavishly imitative of the mother-country. So that, in spite of the "Revolution," our whole legal and political system remained more English than the English, petrified and unchanging, while in England law developed to meet the needs of the changing times."

         My understanding of the passage above is that the early colonial people came to a country in which, wasn’t of their original place of birth, wanting others to assimilate to their “English ways” not really trying to understand the culture of those already occupying land in America. They didn’t come to America wanting to learn the culture of others, they came wanting to take over a land and have others follow and live by their traditions and laws. The colonial people migrated to this new land with the mindset that every other culture would adopt their way of how to live in America.

           

            I chose this passage because it shows that from the start this country has always been a “melting pot” and land filled with diversity. Randolph Bourne starts the passage saying, “We are all foreign-born or the descendants of foreign-born, and if distinctions are to be made between us they should rightly be on some other ground than indigenousness” (pg. 2).  We can make notice of differences amongst people but we shouldn’t say what culture is the truest when America was never the early colonialist natural place of birth. The first people in America were the Native Americans. The natives had their own way of living, traditions, laws and beliefs. The colonialists came to a land which was foreign to them, they had no history here wanting to change it to what they believed was right. They wanted freedom to do as they liked and make laws and have everyone follow their culture. The colonists took over America creating a foreign culture to other occupants of the land and even today hundreds of years later, their values and ideas still govern the land making the “melting pot” seem as a failure of democracy. When my belief is that the democracy failed when the early colonist came to the new land with no regards to adopt or assimilate to the way the land was upon their arrival.  Democracy is liberty and freedom. Yet it’s frowned upon to migrate to America keeping your traditions and values from the land of your families origin and it’s expected that you become fully apart of another society. We shouldn’t say that everyone that comes to America should throw away their beliefs when the country is based on another countries values and culture.

            I believe this passage is important because it shows us that this country started as a “melting pot” and there isn’t really an “American way”. There isn’t really an American tradition because the colonist brought over their traditions and laws from the English. So, how could most people say that immigrants who enter this country should forget about their culture and live by what society thinks is “American” when the creators of the “American culture” were not even descendants from the land? The “melting pot” theory is an accurate representation that democracy is what defines America and not assimilation to a culture. That’s why America is so diverse.