Retired Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens wrote an op-ed in the New York Times, responding to this past weekend’s national March For Our Lives actions. He opens with some facts.
Rarely in my lifetime have I seen the type of civic engagement schoolchildren and their supporters demonstrated in Washington and other major cities throughout the country this past Saturday. These demonstrations demand our respect. They reveal the broad public support for legislation to minimize the risk of mass killings of schoolchildren and others in our society.
Justice Stevens is referring to the overwhelming consensus that something must be done to end gun violence in our country.
From there, Justice Stevens decides to rain all over the NRA’s parade.
That support is a clear sign to lawmakers to enact legislation 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 purchasers of firearms. But the demonstrators should seek more effective and more lasting reform. They should demand a repeal of the Second Amendment.
Justice Stevens then creates his argument from the history of our country, breaking down how our highest court had supported the right of federal or state legislations to create gun control laws, based on the tenet that some weapons bear no resemblance to anything regarding a “well regulated militia,” as stated in the Second Amendment. He brings people up to speed on the campaign by the NRA and others that brought us to the Supreme Court’s ruling in 2008 on District of Columbia v. Heller that has created the legislative handcuffs we all still wear 10 years later. Justice Stevens dissented in that split opinion.
That decision — which I remain convinced was wrong and certainly was debatable — has provided the N.R.A. with a propaganda weapon of immense power. Overturning that decision via a constitutional amendment to get rid of the Second Amendment would be simple and would do more to weaken the N.R.A.’s ability to stymie legislative debate and block constructive gun control legislation than any other available option.
As Justice Stevens explains, this would, at the very least, make our children safer than they’ve been since 2008.