Finally!
Finally, a high ranking Democrat finally has the guts to say what lies near and dear to the cockles of the vast majority of their party’s heart: “Repeal the Second Amendment.”
Thanks you, John Paul Stevens, for not just, at long last, admitting what Democrats have long-believed, but doing so out-loud and in mixed company!
There, was that so hard? All you had to do was tell the truth.
Democrats want to repeal part of the Bill of Rights so they can forcibly disarm law-abiding Americans.
Both left and right have known this for a long time, but Democrats felt compelled to lie about it for trivial reasons like “losing elections.”
To thine own self be true!
Additional reactions:
Usually, advocates of gun control tend to give assurances that they’re not out to repeal the Second Amendment. A forthright demand for a repeal of the Second Amendment would wreck those assurances and elevate the pro-gun side, which could credibly intensify its rhetoric with reality-based anxiety that they are coming to take away your constitutional rights. If they can take away your Second Amendment rights — if the Bill of Rights is on the chopping block — they may come for your freedom of religion next, they can take away your freedom of speech, you right to be free of unreasonable searches and seizures — whatever they like, whatever they think stands in their way.
The op-ed comes across as whining over his Heller defeat and the implication that the Constitution should be treated as a historical relic (Stevens’ term). That certainly explains some of his votes on the Supreme Court, perhaps most notably in Kelo, although courts had unfortunately paved that road long before. At least in this case, Stevens suggests using a valid constitutional process to erode individual rights rather than a Supreme Court decision that effectively rewrites the Constitution to expand federal power at the expense of liberty. That may have more to do with Stevens’ lack of a seat on the court at this time, though.
So how likely will a repeal effort be? Maybe if Democrats really start pushing it — as they clearly would love to see it happen — it might get, oh, 40% of the House to vote for it, far short of what’s necessary to send it to the states. The only states likely to ratify such an amendment proposal are those whose gun-control regulations have utterly failed to stop violence in their jurisdictions, as was the case in Washington DC when Heller was decided in 2008.
However, such an effort would certainly clarify the choices for voters outside of those jurisdictions in national elections, and Democrats would be lucky to comprise 40% of Congress if they tried to follow Stevens’ advice. Don’t expect too many of them to climb on Stevens’ bandwagon, especially as rickety as it is in this essay.
And some tweets:
Liberals: we don’t want to take your guns away
Also liberals: check out this awesome editorial in The NY Times called “time to repeal the second amendment”
— Charlie Kirk (@charliekirk11) March 27, 2018
I see that "Repeal the Second Amendment" is trending. I guess #Democrats just HATE having Senators in their party from West Virginia, Montana, North Dakota…
— BattleSwarm (@BattleSwarmBlog) March 27, 2018
#WhatILearnedToday: Liberals so lust to disarm law abiding Americans that they've stopped pretending they don't want to "Repeal the Second Amendment" anymore. Voting for #Democrats is a vote for complete firearms confiscation.
— BattleSwarm (@BattleSwarmBlog) March 27, 2018
Tags: Ann Althouse, Ed Morrissey, Guns, John Paul Stevens, Second Amendment, Supreme Court