This is hardly news to many of us who reported on retired Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens in 2014 where he penned those very words in his book Six Amendments: How and Why We Should Change the Constitution. Now, the 97-year-old is claiming that the Second Amendment is a "relic of the 18th Century" and needs to be repealed.
Stevens encouraged the little Communists who showed up in DC over the weekend at the March for our Lives event to “seek more effective and more lasting reform” in an op-ed he penned for the New York Times on Sunday.
"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," wrote Stevens. "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."
No, they don't demand our respect. There is not "broad public support" for legislation that will not minimize what is being proposed. There is a louder cry from the heartland of America to follow the Constitution and protect God-given rights, not babysit childish anti-Americans who aren't even able to vote yet.
He continued, "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."
They can demand all they want, but in the end, even to legislate against arms to restrict or regulate them is a clear violation of the enumerated powers given to Congress and the executive branch has absolutely no authority granted to it in the Constitution to do such a thing. Furthermore, they're going to practically move Heaven and Earth to repeal the Second Amendment and if, by some chance, they would accomplish it, don't think there wouldn't be a vicious and bloody war that would ensue upon attempts to go door to door to confiscate arms here in America.
"Concern that a national standing army might pose a threat to the security of the separate states led to the adoption of that amendment, which provides that 'a well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.'" he added. "Today that concern is a relic of the 18th century."
Actually, it's more relevant than ever, especially as we see our government arming up against the people. From the Internal Revenue Service to the Social Security Administration to the Bureau of Land Management and virtually every other unconstitutional alphabet agency, they have been armed over the past decade with the very rifles that the Communists want to remove from the hands of the American people, the AR-15. they were armed by none other than Barack Hussein Obama Soetoro Sobarakah.
The Second Amendment is not a relic because the militia is made up of the able-bodied men in America and, to do away with the Second Amendment means you would also have to do away with the militia clause in the Constitution, which states clearly that instead of the alphabet agencies enforcing the law, it is actually the job of the militia to do so.
Furthermore, as Ben Swann correctly points out, the militia was specifically written down so that we would not have a standing army, something we've had for decades.
For over 200 years after the adoption of the Second Amendment, it was uniformly understood as not placing any limit on either federal or state authority to enact gun control legislation. In 1939 the Supreme Court unanimously held that Congress could prohibit the possession of a sawed-off shotgun because that weapon had no reasonable relation to the preservation or efficiency of a “well regulated militia.”And yet, our military forces and the police possess such arms. So, apparently, the law doesn't apply to everyone in society, which gives me a moment to make a point. These people like Stevens and Communist politicians who are always telling us that we need to get these weapons off the streets are the very ones promoting putting those same weapons on the streets, just in the hands of our policemen. They are also the ones telling us America is a battlefield, but saying we don't need weapons of war. Hypocritical much?
Additionally, what he says about things going on 200 years is absolutely inaccurate and you can read about such nonsense from our founding fathers in the Federalist Papers
as well as their other writings. However, I think Publius Huldah does one of the best jobs at explaining just how much arms were off limits to restriction and regulation by government. You can view the video here.
But I digress.
Stevens continues, "During the years when Warren Burger was our chief justice, from 1969 to 1986, no judge, federal or state, as far as I am aware, expressed any doubt as to the limited coverage of that amendment. When organizations like the National Rifle Association disagreed with that position and began their campaign claiming that federal regulation of firearms curtailed Second Amendment rights, Chief Justice Burger publicly characterized the N.R.A. as perpetrating “one of the greatest pieces of fraud, I repeat the word fraud, on the American public by special interest groups that I have ever seen in my lifetime.”
Actually, it wasn't fraud at all. By the way, the NRA does have a documented history of compromising our rights when it comes to the Second Amendment, but what Stevens is speaking about is not fraud in the least.
He went on to attack the Heller decision.
In 2008, the Supreme Court overturned Chief Justice Burger’s and others’ long-settled understanding of the Second Amendment’s limited reach by ruling, in District of Columbia v. Heller, that there was an individual right to bear arms. I was among the four dissenters.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.
That simple but dramatic action would move Saturday’s marchers closer to their objective than any other possible reform. It would eliminate the only legal rule that protects sellers of firearms in the United States — unlike every other market in the world. It would make our schoolchildren safer than they have been since 2008 and honor the memories of the many, indeed far too many, victims of recent gun violence.
Clearly, Stevens was on the wrong side then as he is now.
History does not side with Stevens.
Our founders did not side with Stevens.
Our Constitution does not side with Stevens.
And neither do I.