Former Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens has just done the NRA and its allies a great favor: In an opinion piece in The New York Times, he proposed to repeal the Second Amendment.
“That simple but dramatic action would move Saturday’s marchers closer to their objective than any other possible reform,†argued Stevens, who dissented in the landmark cases recognizing an individual right to own firearms for self-defense.
He’s wrong on both substantive and political grounds. Pursuing this option would be a foolish waste of the energies generated by outrage at the Parkland shootings.
In the first place, it’s politically impossible. A constitutional amendment requires ratification by 38 states. Donald Trump carried 30. To repeal the Second Amendment, you’d have to get every state that voted for Hillary Clinton, plus 18 that didn’t, to agree. For the foreseeable future, that has zero chance of happening.
The second defect is any such effort would inflame the worst fears of gun owners and those sympathetic to gun rights. Many of them agree on the need for more regulation — or could be persuaded. Once the debate is about scrapping a constitutional right, though, many will assume that any seemingly reasonable new regulation is just a step toward total confiscation.
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/chapman/ct-repeal-second-amendment-stevens-20180327-story.html
