CBS News reported that Retired
Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens calls for repeal of [the] Second
Amendment:
Retired Supreme Court Justice John
Paul Stevens is calling for the repeal
of the Second Amendment to allow for significant gun control legislation. The
97-year-old Stevens wrote
in an op-ed for The New York Times
on [March 27, 2018] suggesting a repeal would weaken the National
Rifle Association's ability to "block
constructive gun control legislation" and be a more "effective and
more lasting reform."
Stevens was on the losing end of a 2008 ruling in which the high
court held that the Second Amendment gives individuals the right to own a
gun for self-defense.
Stevens was on the losing end of a 2008 ruling in which the high
court held that the Second Amendment gives individuals the right to own a gun
for self-defense. He had previously called for changing the Second Amendment to
permit gun control.
Stevens said the decision in that case, District of Columbia v.
Heller, "has provided the N.R.A. with a propaganda weapon of immense
power." Stevens retired from the court in 2010, after more than 35 years.
[emphasis added]
In his 2008 dissent in District
of Columbia v. Heller, Supreme Court Justice
John Paul Stevens insisted that the Second Amendment offers zero protection
for what he called the "right to possess and use guns for nonmilitary
purposes like hunting and personal self-defense." [emphasis added]
What, exactly, is left of one’s unalienable
right to life without the right to defend one’s life, loved ones, and property
from those who would threaten it?
In any event, I don't see how repealing the Second Amendment can in any way mean repeal of the right to own a gun for self-defense. That
right, like all rights, precede government. CBS NEWS is 100% wrong: The Second
Amendment does not “give” individuals the right to bear arms. It merely recognizes
that right explicitly.
But even if that explicit recognition is
removed, the right remains. That’s because the U.S. Constitution is a grant to
the government of delimited powers. Nowhere in the Constitution is there a
grant to government of the power to forbid gun ownership for self-defense. So,
without the Second Amendment, gun rights would be protected by the Ninth
Amendment, which states that “The
enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to
deny or disparage others retained by the people.”
Of course, judges have been known to twist the
plain meaning of the Constitution in order to restrict liberty. But barring an
Amendment to explicitly ban private ownership of guns, there is no way the
government can legitimately do so, Second Amendment or not.
Related Reading:
Justice
John Paul Stevens Is Wrong About the Second Amendment, Again: The retired justice wants to claw back parts of the Bill of
Rights.—Damon Root
1 comment:
If we ditch the 2nd. Amendment, we still have our right to keep and bear arms. If we also ditch the 9th. Amendment, we still have our right to keep and bear arms plus all our other rights, because in both cases, the Constitution enumerates the powers of the government. If we ditch the enumeration of powers, we're left with specific methods or mechanisms for the operations of legislation, execution and the judicial, in other words, procedural due process regardless of substance. But, for our rights, we still have the Declaration of Independence to fall back on. That takes a lot of brains, over again, over the same ground, for each generation.
The Constitution provides, in addition to procedural due process, piles of redundancies and elaborations of the substance of the Declaration of Independence. This substance is supposed to be the sole subject of all procedural due process. The Constitution provides more specificity of the substance, for the benefit of dumber people and so nobody has to keep rethinking all of it through, all the time. Education assumes the job of teaching it to each new generation. One time per generation should be enough. The enumeration of powers and the 2nd. and 9th. Amendments as well as the rest of the Bill of Rights, and the entire written Constitution, helps keep the educational process on track, on the track of the Declaration of Independence.
As the substance has been increasingly ignored and evaded for over 100 years, and especially today, the procedural due process is now about completely perverted by the exact antithesis of the substance of the Declaration of Independence.
Specifying an anti-substance and perverting procedural due process by running that anti-substance through that process in order to 'establish' it doesn't make it, nor the enforcement of it, legitimate. It is illegitimate and immoral. It has no such standing to be obeyed. It might persist only if it has enough raw physical power. Any person or group which disobeys has morality and LAW on its side. If such has enough physical power to get away with it permanently, GOOD FOR THAT PERSON OR GROUP!
Post a Comment