John Paul Stevens (shown) is at it again, using his influence as a one-time U.S. Supreme Court justice to push a repeal of the Second Amendment and the effective ending of the God-given right of Americans to defend themselves from all sorts of dangers — including a tyrannical government.
In a March 27 New York Times op-ed, the 97-year-old Stevens, who retired from the High Court in 2010 but is still offering dissenting opinions, pointed to the highly publicized March 24 demonstrations — in which a small minority of teens and youth across America were manipulated by agenda-minded adults into marching for gun control — as proof that Americans must finally throw in the towel and meekly give up their rights to keep and bear arms.
Claiming that the highly choreographed marches reveal “broad public support” for gun legislation that will supposedly “minimize the risk of mass killings of schoolchildren and others in our society,” Stevens insisted that it is now incumbent upon legislators to pass laws that will ban semiautomatic weapons, increase the age for gun purchases from 18 to 21 years old, and beef up background checks for those purchasing the handful of firearms types that would be left available if those of Stevens’ ilk have their way.
But there is more for legislators to do, Stevens insists: “They should demand a repeal of the Second Amendment.”
Calling an armed citizenry equipped to defend itself against lethal government tyranny “a relic of the 18th century,” Stevens went on to accuse the National Rifle Association of fraud for its assertion that federal intrusion into private firearms ownership amounted to an assault on the Second Amendment.
In 2008 the Supreme Court agreed with the NRA and most other Americans, reaffirming, in District of Columbia v. Heller, the continued relevance of the Second Amendment’s guarantee of the right of individual Americans to bear arms.
Stevens proudly recalled that he was “among the four dissenters” in that constitutionally sound ruling, which he argued “has provided the NRA 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 NRA’s ability to stymie legislative debate and block constructive gun control legislation than any other available option.”
Quite a mouthful from one who once pledged to uphold the authority of the Constitution, and who, by his own admission, did the opposite in at least one crucial case.
In truth, this is just Stevens’ latest outburst against the Second Amendment. In 2014 the former High Court justice, an unapologetic proponent of the theology of a “living Constitution” that can be changed at will by elites such as himself, penned the telling book Six Amendments: How and Why We Should Change the Constitution. Among the changes he recommended, as he reiterated in a Washington Post op-ed later that year, was to change the wording of the Second Amendment to read: “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear arms when serving in the Militia shall not be infringed” (Emphasis added.)
Responding to Stevens’ latest sadly misshapen diatribe, and the March 24 controlled anti-gun marches that prompted it, Chris Cox of the NRA’s Institute for Legislative Action reflected: “Emboldened by the mainstream media, the gun-control lobby is no longer distancing themselves from the radical idea of repealing the Second Amendment and banning all firearms. The protesters in last week’s march told us with their words and placards that the current debate is not about fake terms like ‘commonsense’ gun regulation. It’s about banning all guns.”
He added that right-thinking Americans, as well, thankfully, as the majority of present-day Supreme Court justices,“believe in the Second Amendment right to self-protection and we will unapologetically continue to fight to protect this fundamental freedom.”
Photo: AP Images
