Retired Supreme Court justice urges the repeal of Second Amendment
Herculean effort needed to do so
The Associated Press
WASHINGTON — Retired Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens is calling for the repeal of the Second Amendment to allow for significant gun control legislation.
The 97-year-old Mr. Stevens says in an essay on The New York Times website that repeal would weaken the National Rifle Association’s ability to “block constructive gun control legislation.”
He was on the losing end of a 2008 ruling in which the high court held that the Second Amendment gives individuals the right to own a gun for self-defense. He had previously called for changing the Second Amendment to permit gun control.
Mr. Stevens says the decision in that case, District of Columbia v. Heller, “has provided the N.R.A. with a propaganda weapon of immense power.” Mr. Stevens retired from the court in 2010, after more than 35 years.
In his essay published Tuesday, Mr. Stevens talks about the “March for Our Lives” events on Saturday that drew crowds in cities across the country. Mr. Stevens said the demonstrations “reveal the broad public support for legislation to minimize the risk of mass killings of schoolchildren andothers in our society.”
He said the support “is a clear sign to lawmakers to enactlegislation prohibiting civilian ownership of semiautomatic weapons, increasing the minimum age to buy a gun from 18 to 21 years old, and establishing more comprehensive background checks on all purchasersof firearms.”
But Mr. Stevens called on demonstrators to “seek more effective and more lastingreform.”
“They should demand a repeal of the Second Amendment … a relic of the 18th century,” he wrote, arguing that the amendment was designed to counter the threat of a national standing army was once thought to pose to free states — a concern he saidno longer applies.
The provocative column — even from a retired, liberal justice — was expected to make waves. Some conservative media figures have claimed that the outspoken survivors of the Valentine’s Day massacre at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Florida were attempting to strip Americans of their right to own firearms.
Repealing the amendment would be extremely difficult. An amendment to the Constitution can only be proposed either by Congress with a two thirds vote in both houses or by a constitutional convention called for by two thirds of the state legislatures. The amendment then has to be approved by three quarters of the states.
Asked at a White House briefing whether President Donald Trump had any reaction to Mr. Stevens’ comments, press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said the president and administration “still fully support the Second Amendment.”
“We think that the focus has to remain on removing weapons from dangerous individuals, not on blocking all Americans from their constitutional rights,” she said.
The National Rifle Association also issued a statement in response to Mr. Stevens’ essay.
“Emboldened by the mainstream media, the guncontrol lobby is no longer distancing themselves from the radical idea of repealing the Second Amendment and banning all firearms,” Chris Cox, the executive director of the National Rifle Association, said in a statement. “The men and women of the National Rifle Association, along with the majority of the American people and the Supreme Court, believe in the Second Amendment right to self-protection and we will unapologetically continue to fight to protect thisfundamental freedom.”
Mr. Stevens was nominated to the court by thenPresident Gerald Ford, a Republican, but often ruled with his more liberal colleagues.
In 2008, when the Supreme Court ruled 5 to 4 in District of Columbia v. Heller that the Second Amendment offered blanket protection for an individual’s right to possess a firearm — regardless of the person’s connection to a militia — then-Justice Stevens wrote the primary dissenting opinion, claiming that the majority’s opinion was based on a “strained and unpersuasive” reading to the amendment’stext.
The ruling reversed Supreme Court decisions going back to 1939, when the court ruled in United States v. Miller that Congress could ban ownership of short-barreled shotguns had no connection to military or militia activity.
“Neither the text of the Amendment nor the arguments advanced by its proponents evidenced the slightest interest in limiting any legislature’s authority to regulate private civilian uses of firearms,” Justice Stevens wrote. “Specifically, there is no indication that the Framers of the Amendment intended to enshrine the common-law right of self-defense in the Constitution.”