This paper is mainly devoted to a semismooth Newton method for solving variational inequalities of the second kind. In the first part, some natural regularized problems are introduced that approach the original problem. Next, a semismooth Newton framework is introduced for solving these regularized problems. The locally superlinear convergence rate is also established. Model applications are provided in the final part of this paper, as well as numerical results that illustrate the accuracy of the abstract framework developed in the present paper.