Explaining the US Gun Situation to a German

You tend to notice a fair amount of German news media attention on gun control within the US, and Germans will tell you that they absolutely understand the topic.  At this point, you have to lead them into an educational moment.

You start with the exact wording of the 2nd Amendment:

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.

German translation: Eine gut regulierte Miliz, die zur Sicherheit eines freien Staates notwendig ist, das Recht des Volkes, Waffen zu behalten und zu tragen, wird nicht verletzt.

Infringed or verletzt, is an interesting word.  It typically means unchanged.

So you then note that if you wanted to dump the word infringed or verletzt.....all you have to do is go and change the Constitution.

There are two methods stipulated to change the Constitution: (1) The House and Senate meet and propose the change with two-thirds of a vote in each. (2) Two-thirds of the state legislatures can call for a constitutional convention.  The convention would then write/draft the proposed change and vote upon it.

No matter which method you use....you then come to the more significant issue.  The change offered up by method one or two....then has to go back to all fifty states, and three-quarters (75-percent) of the states must review it and pass legislation to accept the change. 

While it may not be obvious to the German....you can ask them....why can't a ten-word sentence be added to allow gun control?  The answer is that you can't get that type of change accepted across the states required for a Constitutional change.

So all of this leads only to one alternate outcome....the fight to use the Supreme Court to invalidate the 2nd Amendment or to skip on the Constitutional change by saying a different interpretation exists. That's what this entire discussion is really about.  You can't find a group of people from all fifty states to accept a ten-word change. 

The German use of licenses?  When you go and examine the whole German method of issuing weapon licenses, the term of guns is not a right, and so this German word 'verletz' (infringed) doesn't exist.

As much as the German news media tries to play the intellectual game and pretend they understand the whole system....they fail to grasp this term 'verletz', and the methods required to change things.