Contributors

Sunday, April 01, 2018

John Paul Stevens is Right

Former Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens recently penned an Op Ed calling for the repeal of the 2nd Amendment. I wholeheartedly support his assertions and call for the students of this nation that risen up against gun violence across the country to aim for this goal. It might not be as difficult as we think.

Of course, we would need a 2/3 vote of both chambers of Congress and 38 states to ratify such a repeal. If a vote were held today, how close would we be? California, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Massachusetts, Maryland, New Jersey, New York, Rhode Island all have 2 Democratic Senators who would vote for repeal. That's 10 states and 20 Senators. Washington and Oregon have shifted leftward so that would give us four more senators and 2 more states. Our total is now 12 states and 22 Senators.

Looking at the states that fall into the middle (Colorado, Nevada, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, Ohio, North Carolina, Virginia, Pennsylvania),  I see about six senators and maybe 4 states that would vote for repeal. I'm being conservative and clearly this could all change in the 2018 midterms but I think it's safe to say that 28 senators and 16 states would vote to repeal the 2nd amendment.

Obviously, this far short of what we would need but it's a pretty solid foundation on which to build. We could start by focusing voting efforts on these states in the middle and then branching out to those states that lean more right. It's also far closer to the goal than gun rights activists would probably like to admit.

For decades they had the numbers on their side in terms of reliable voters. Parkland has changed all of that and we now have a retired SCOTUS justice calling for the repeal of the 2nd amendment. Each mass shooting that happens from here on out will put more and more pressure on the NRA and other gun rights activists to cave. They probably won't.

And that means that the end is nigh for them:)


1 comment:

Nikto said...

As I wrote in a previous post, the problem isn’t the Second Amendment. That amendment simply establishes the right of States to arm militias made up of civilians, the training and regulation of which are controlled by the states, the Congress and the president.

That interpretation was the law of the land for two centuries, until activist conservative judges rendered a political — not legal – decision in the Heller vs. District of Columbia case on guns in the home.

And even Heller didn’t rule that states and localities can’t make laws about gun ownership. It just ruled that people had to be allowed to have guns in the home, as an extension of the “Castle Doctrine.”

As I said then, this is an incorrect and laughably naive ruling, akin to the catastrophically moronic ruling on campaign finance that gave corporations the ability to funnel unlimited wads of cash into political campaigns (which ultimately allows foreign owned companies to influence American elections).

These decisions will go down in history as the most wrong-headed rulings in the history of the Supreme Court. The only question is how much damage they will do before the thugs Republicans have appointed to the Supreme Court die of old age or are shamed into resigning, and these incorrect rulings can be overturned.