Editor,

With Trump running his mouth about the Second Amendment and Hillary’s so-called campaign to remove the Second Amendment of the Constitution, he is only playing on the fact that most conservatives will believe this lie and not try to research it.

This is the same tack that Fox uses to guide your thinking and feed you with half-truths and flat-out misinformation on every subject they report on. With 90 percent of the media owned by conservatives, it is hard to get the real story and most are content to go about their lives thinking that conservative radio and TV report the facts.

How can any president make changes to the Constitution? In my research I came up with a short synopsis on the process — no person can single-handedly change the Constitution.

A new amendment repealing the amendment in question. It must be done exactly the same way, because the repeal itself is an amendment.

An amendment to the Constitution legally becomes part of the Constitution and is, therefore, part of our national law, indivisible from it except by the Constitutional provision for changing the Constitution.

It cannot be minimized; to be removed, it must be repealed by a new amendment.

To begin, a proposed amendment must be  approved by a two-thirds majority of both legislative bodies of the United States Congress.

The proposed amendment must then be sent out to every individual state’s legislature for consideration. Each state follows its own parliamentary process to arrive at a “yea” or “nay” on the proposed amendment.

For a proposed amendment to become a constitutional amendment, three-fourths of the individual American states must vote a final “yea.” With the current body of states numbering 50, the required number of state ratifications to adopt the new amendment is 38.

Upon the confirmation of the 38th “yea,” the amendment becomes part of the Constitution, amending or changing whatever the subject of the amendment covers — whether it be a new cause or eliminating an old amendment.

Incidentally, this is why there’s never going to be a repeal of the Second Amendment — there will never be 38 states voting to take our guns.

Donald E. Bettner

Oak Harbor