Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens, nominated by President Gerald Ford in 1975, served on the Court from 1975 until his retirement in 2010. Depending on the composition of the Court at any given time, Justice Stevens was considered a ‘moderate’ or a ‘liberal’, though he considered himself to be a moderate conservative. But labels don’t matter … actions do, and in my book Justice Stevens was an esteemed Supreme Court Justice, one who strove for doing what was right, not necessarily what was popular. Though a registered Republican, a 2003 statistical analysis found him to be the most liberal member of the Court, and in 2007 he was dubbed “chief justice of the liberal Supreme Court.” In 2012, Justice John Paul Stevens received the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest honour at that time.
What I would like to share with you today is an OpEd written by Justice Stevens in 2018, approximately a year before his death, in the wake of the murder of 17 young people at Marjorie Douglas Stoneman High School in Parkland, Florida. Few will agree with Stevens’ position on this matter, most will consider it entirely too radical, but frankly I am 100% in agreement with him … always have been, even before Uvalde, before Parkland, and before Sandy Hook. Today’s ‘gun rights’ are not even close to what the Founding Fathers intended …
Repeal the Second Amendment
By John Paul Stevens
March 27, 2018
A musket from the 18th century, when the Second Amendment was written, and an assault rifle of today.Credit…Top, MPI, via Getty Images, bottom, Joe Raedle/Getty Images
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.
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.
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.” Today that concern is a relic of the 18th century.
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.”
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.”
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.
Less than 28 hours after President Joe Biden took his oath of office, Ms. Greene filed impeachment charges against him! The charge? “Abuse of power by enabling bribery and other high crimes and misdemeanors.” Don’t ask me what the hell she’s even talking about … no sane person could possibly figure out what happens inside this … woman’s … head. She even had the unmitigated gall to post a 
It was two weeks ago that she wore a mask that read “CENSORED” even as she delivered nationally televised remarks from the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives. Four days later, she was temporarily suspended from Twitter for repeatedly claiming that Georgia’s election results (the same ones that made her a member of Congress) were stolen. Fresh from her Twitter suspension, she declared Biden to be the president of “Communist China.”
Pick your jaws up off the ground now, take a deep breath. Yes, she actually said that. What sort of an idiot gives a 10-year-old child a damn assault rifle??? Anybody … ANYBODY who would give a child a gun of any sort, let alone an assault weapon, deserves to be drawn and quartered!!!
Another article on the NRA Family website suggests kids might also think about using Thompson/Center HotShot rifle, “a tiny gun intended for the very youngest shooters”. A company spokesman explains that gun targets “the six- to 12-year-old range”. These come in a variety of fun colour options.
Oh yeah, folks, the answer is not only more guns, but let’s start ‘em off as soon as their old enough to hold one in their hand. Right out of the cradle, so that by the time they are teenagers, they will already own an arsenal that includes at least 3 or 4 assault rifles and maybe even a grenade launcher or two, eh?
The first was Sydney Aiello, the second an as-yet-unnamed male student. These two are victims just as much as the 17 who died on that fateful day. How many more will there be?
Mr. Gaetz, it would seem, has a few skeletons in his own closet. First, here is his mug shot from a 2008 DUI arrest. Even though he refused the breathalyzer test, he did not have his license suspended for a year as Florida law mandates. Between 1999 and 2014, he received no less than 16 speeding tickets. I hope his colleagues in the House never take him up on the offer of a ride to lunch! Oh, and Mr. Gaetz keeps some really respectable company, too! Take a look …
Why, you ask? It’s what I call the push/push-back. The students are the ‘push’, the momentum that is having a real impact, their voices have already led to new controls on gun ownership in Florida. And those who cherish their right to own guns more than they value their own children are the ‘push-back’, scared that they may lose the right to own an automatic weapon. They might well be in danger of losing the ability to plow down hundreds of people in just a minute or two. They might even … gasp … have to submit to an extended background check and wait 3-5 days before taking possession of their newly purchased gun. And God forbid that their 18-year-old son, Bubba, might have to wait until he is 21 years of age to buy his first gun. And because they are scared of losing their right, they are turning to their protector, Wayne LaPierre and the NRA.
The NRA is short on morals and values, but they are by no means short on marketing skills, for they knew just how to play their cards. They used the protests of our youth to their advantage, used them, just as Donald Trump used terrorism and terrorists, to instill fear into those gun-lovin’ fools. “The threat to our freedom has never been more real,” reads one social media post that includes a link to its membership page. Another post says that gun control proponents “are manipulating and exploiting children as part of their plan to DESTROY the Second Amendment.”
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