The L.A. Clippers’ J.J. Redick said Tuesday that it might be time for the Second Amendment to change to allow gun control. Redick was speaking about college sports and stated that NCAA basketball players ought to be paid. But, he soon changed the flavor of the conversation to declaring the end of a Second Amendment that protects 21st century firearms.
“The idea of amateurism, it doesn’t exist anymore,” Redick said. “And so if you’re going to do what you’re doing, then you just need that complete overhaul. It’s got to be something radical. It’s not just, ‘Oh, let’s just pay every player $5,000.’ It really requires something really radical. And maybe that’s getting rid of college athletics as we know it.”
Redick also rephrased a Thomas Jefferson quote.
“I go back to the Thomas Jefferson quote — I’m going to butcher it, but it’s something we’ve all read. ‘You wouldn’t expect a little boy to wear the pea coat he wore as a boy as a grown man.’ You need to change with the times,” he said.
Redick compared college sports to gun control, saying laws should evolve in the same way he wants to see collegiate sports evolve.
“Laws should reflect that [change], rules, regulations, especially as we know more. Gun control,” Redick said. “I don’t want to get political, but gun control. That’s something that should evolve as technology evolves. When the 2nd Amendment was created, we had to worry about bears, people lived on the frontier and it took a minute to load a muzzle. I think laws should reflect where we are with guns.”
The day before Redick made these comments, Independent Institute’s Dave Kopel wrote in the Washington Post:
Gun-control advocates often argue that gun-control laws must be more restrictive than the original meaning of the Second Amendment would allow, because modern firearms are so different from the firearms of the late 18th century. This argument is based on ignorance of the history of firearms. It is true that in 1791 the most common firearms were handguns or long guns that had to be reloaded after every shot. But it is not true that repeating arms, which can fire multiple times without reloading, were unimagined in 1791. To the contrary, repeating arms long predate the 1606 founding of the first English colony in America. As of 1791, repeating arms were available but expensive.
The late Justice Antonin Scalia wrote his opinion in District of Columbia v. Heller (2008) case, where he pointed to judicial precedent to show the Second Amendment protects guns “in common use” at any given time. At all times, the Second Amendment protects the guns commonly owned and used by law-abiding citizens. This means protection for the very 21st century firearms J.J. Redick believes justify more gun control.
[revad2]
