“Like most rights, the Second Amendment right is not unlimited. It is not a right to keep and carry any weapon whatsoever in any manner whatsoever and for whatever purpose.”
Believe it or not, this is a quote from the majority opinion in District of Columbia v. Heller (2008) by Antonin Scalia. The court voted 5-4 to strike down a D.C.’s law which in part banned hand guns outright.
Heller is a landmark case in which the Supreme Court of the United States held that the Second Amendment protects an individual’s right to possess a firearm unconnected with service in a militia for traditionally lawful purposes, such as self-defense within the home, and that Washington, D.C.’s handgun ban and requirement that lawfully-owned rifles and shotguns be kept “unloaded and disassembled or bound by a trigger lock” violated this guarantee.
In the dissenting opinion, Justice John Paul Stevens stated that the court’s judgment was
“a strained and unpersuasive reading” which overturned longstanding precedent, and that the court had “bestowed a dramatic upheaval in the law”
Interesting because Justice Stevens recently wrote in an op-ed piece appearing in The New York Times,
“The Second Amendment states 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…is a relic of the 18th century”
He adds that repealing it would eliminate the only legal rule that protects sellers of firearms in the United States.
It’s also interesting that Justice Stevens would call for the repeal of the 2nd Amendment knowing how high the bar is for that to happen.
Additionally, former chief justice Warren E. Burger said in a 1991 interview on PBS’s “MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour. The Second Amendment
“has been the subject of one of the greatest pieces of fraud, I repeat the word fraud,’ on the American public,”
Burger has said often that the “right to bear arms” belongs to the states, and he has attacked the NRA for fostering the opposite view.
Civics 101 –
An amendment to the Constitution is the law of the land. To repeal an amendment requires another amendment to the Constitution. I.E. prohibition.
The 18th amendment prohibited alcohol and the 21st repealed the 18th.
To institute a new amendment, 2/3 of both houses of congress must pass it. Then 3/4 of state houses of legislation must ratify it. if so, then it becomes the law of the land.
Justice Stevens knows this, and the possibility of 38 states ratifying a new amendment is practically nill.
Side note:
During his presidential campaign, Donald Trump repeatedly and incorrectly claimed that
“Hillary Clinton wants to take your guns away and she wants to abolish the Second Amendment.”
Trump also issued a desire and a veiled threat to have the 2nd Amendment people take care of Hilary. This from the mouth of a man running for President.
In following Justice Burger’s point of view, it’s up to the states to enact tougher gun laws. After the Parkman massacre, Florida has taken the lead by enacting tougher laws that:
- Raise the minimum age.
- Create a waiting period.
- Ban bump stocks.
The NRA sued Florida within hours of Gov. Rick Scott’s signing of the bill. And now it will be up to the appellate courts to shut down the NRA once and for all. The five million members of the NRA are not a majority of the people. They should not have the power to dictate to the rest of the nation their distorted view of the 2nd Amendment.