The young anti-school shooting crusaders are discrediting the NRA and influencing public opinion to support gun control. Opponents of gun rights are coming out of the woodwork, organizing boycotts, shaming companies, and trying to make gun rights advocates social pariahs, almost as despicable as opponents of gay marriage. Now retired Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens is proposing the ultimate solution: Let’s just repeal the Second Amendment.
From CNN:
“A concern that a national standing army might pose a threat to the security of the separate states led to the adoption of that amendment,” Stevens wrote an
op-ed published in The New York Times Tuesday, adding, “today that concern is a relic of the 18th century.”
A lifelong Republican but considered liberal in his judicial rulings, Stevens pointed to his dissent in the 2008 landmark
District of Columbia v. Heller case that the Second Amendment protects an individual’s right to possess a firearm for self-defense within his home.
“That decision — which I remain convinced was wrong and certainly was debatable — has provided the (National Rifle Association) with a propaganda weapon of immense power,” wrote Stevens, who served from 1975 until he retired in 2010.
He added, “Overturning that decision via a constitutional amendment to get rid of the Second Amendment would be simple and would do more to weaken the NRA’s ability to stymie legislative debate and block constructive gun control legislation than any other available option.”
This would be very difficult to do.
Here is the process for amending the Constitution. Even attempting to repeal part of the Bill of Rights is unsettling.
Read
this response to an earlier proposal to repeal the Second Amendment.
But look for this to become a signature issue on the Left.
And if you think the American public would never let this happen, look at what happened with gay marriage.
Photo by Lorie Shaull, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=66647773
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