Demonstrators who protested gun violence during the March For Our Lives rally last weekend should demand a repeal of the Second Amendment, according to retired Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens.
In a New York Times op-ed, Stevens said the Second Amendment was adopted amid a concern that a standing army might pose a threat to the security of the states.“Today that concern is a relic of the 18th century,” Stevens said.
The Second Amendment reads: “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.”
The amendment was previously understood to allow legislative limits on guns. Stevens cited a 1939 Supreme Court decision, United States v. Miller, that held Congress could ban possession of a sawed-off shotgun because it had no reasonable relation to the preservation or efficiency of a “well-regulated militia.”
That understanding was overturned when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in District of Columbia v. Heller in 2008 that there was an individual right to bear arms. Stevens points out that he was one of four dissenters, and he remains convinced that the decision “was wrong and certainly was debatable.”
Former Justice John Paul Stevens calls for repeal of the Second Amendment