In the aftermath of this horrible tragedy in Las Vegas, New York Times columnist Timothy Egan has characterized the Second Amendment as the “cancer in the Constitution,” essentially no different than the “three-fifths” compromise in the constitution that enabled slaveholding states to count a portion of their slave population toward congressional seat apportionment.

“We tried to fix that (the three-fifths provision) through our bloodiest war and a series of amendments that followed,” Egan contends.

The “cancer in the Constitution?” Two truly remarkable facets of the Constitution are the Second and Tenth amendments, which were conceived to underscore to those who governed on our behalf that there were barriers over which they could not step. Far from cancers, they have served, along with other constitutional provisions, as safeguards that have kept tyranny at bay for almost a quarter of a millennium. I often wonder: What will be left of liberty when the left is finished with us? Of course, they will never finish because perpetual revolution defines the very nature of the left.