If gun control advocates thought they were making headway in the wake of February’s Florida high school shooting, their cause may have been slowed last week when a former liberal U.S. Supreme Court justice said the country ought to repeal the Second Amendment.
Retired Justice John Paul Stevens, 97, said in an essay on The New York Times website that getting rid of that pesky part of the Constitution would render moot the high court’s 2008 District of Columbia v. Heller decision on which he was on the losing end.
The Heller decision affirmed that the Second Amendment’s clause about “the right of the people to keep and bear arms” essentially included an individual’s right to have a gun for self-defense.
Not surprisingly, Democrats didn’t knock themselves out defending Stevens. That argument, after all, will not fly in most states other than on both coasts.
Indeed, one senator, who is vulnerable in November’s election, quickly declared his opposition to the former’s justice’s argument.