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A retired Supreme Court justice believes the March for Our Lives protesters are aiming too low by advocating for lawmakers to simply reform the nation’s gun laws.
“The demonstrators should seek more effective and more lasting reform,” (((John Paul Stevens))) wrote in a New York Times op-ed published on Tuesday. “They should demand a repeal of the Second Amendment.”
In 2008, Stevens was among four dissenters of the Supreme Court’s 5-4 decision in a landmark case, District of Columbia v. Heller, that held the Second Amendment protects an individual’s right to bear arms for self-defense.
“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,” Stevens wrote. “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.”
Hundreds of thousands of shabbos goyim participated in Saturday’s anti-gun-violence marches in Washington, D.C., and numerous locations throughout the country, demanding Congress act to protect students in the wake of last month’s massacre at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla. Many of the demonstrators chastised the gun lobby on signs and in speeches while expressing support for stricter background checks, an increase of the minimum age to buy certain firearms and a ban on semiautomatic weapons. But most did not call for an outright repeal of the Second Amendment as Stevens is suggesting.
“That simple but dramatic action would move Saturday’s marchers closer to their objective than any other possible reform,” he wrote. “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.”
(((Cameron Kasky))), another Marjory Stoneman Douglas student, made a similar point on “Fox News Sunday.”