by Duane Norman, Free Market Shooter
The “March for our Lives” took over Washington DC last weekend to campaign for more stringent gun control in the US. After spending $5 million in DNC, Bloomberg, and wealthy donor funds, former Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens followed up on the march’s demands with an Op-Ed for The New York Times demanding repeal of the 2nd amendment:
Rarely in my lifetime have I seen the type of civic engagement schoolchildren and their supporters demonstrated in Washington and other major cities throughout the country this past Saturday. These demonstrations demand our respect. They reveal the broad public support for legislation to minimize the risk of mass killings of schoolchildren and others in our society.
That decision — which I remain convinced was wrong and certainly was debatable — has provided the N.R.A. with a propaganda weapon of immense power. Overturning that decision via a constitutional amendment to get rid of the Second Amendment would be simple and would do more to weaken the N.R.A.’s ability to stymie legislative debate and block constructive gun control legislation than any other available option.
Gun control quickly tried to distance itself from Stevens’ demand. CNN‘s Chris Cuomo replied stating that calls for 2A repeal were a “lot of bunk”…
…and David Hogg, the Parkland “survivor” and figurehead of the march, claimed that he was also not proposing 2A repeal:
“What a lot of the media, and especially Fox News, has messed up with me is they’ve made it seem like I’m trying to take away people’s guns — that I’m against the Second Amendment,” Hogg said during a broadcast at the March for Our Lives rally Saturday in Washington, D.C. “My father is a retired FBI agent. I have guns in my house. I’m not against the Second Amendment.”
In fact, a large portion of the crowd was in agreement with Justice Stevens, and violently so…
‘Nobody is saying ban all guns’ pic.twitter.com/RS6NyD0nN9
— Chet Cannon (@Chet_Cannon) March 27, 2018
…and even government-funded NPR has turned its attention to “what it would take” to repeal the 2nd amendment:
And this time, we may get stronger background checks, or a higher purchase age or some of the other things that you were talking about a moment ago. But all those things could be done without repealing the Second Amendment, and then it would be up to the courts to decide if the stricter limits violated the Second Amendment. And if the courts did decide that, perhaps that then would put more pressure on the amendment itself.
This position advocated by NPR isn’t new – it has been peddled by gun control groups in the media for years. In early 2013, “journalist” Kurt Eichenwald pushed that position in Vanity Fair:
As written, though, the amendment has nothing—nothing—to do with modern America. Worse, it is the biggest mess of verbiage in the whole Constitution, making its actual meaning almost impossible to discern. We need to get rid of it and try again with an amendment that makes sense.
No surprises here – Eichenwald thinks a tweet is a “deadly weapon” against him, so the sight of a firearm must scare him even more than they scared Gersh Kuntzman and Gary Tuchman. But Eichenwald is not alone – in 2014, The Week proposed “banning” the 2nd amendment:
Gun rights don’t rise to that status. The basic principle of a liberal democracy is that, for laws to be legitimate, majorities must enact them. Setting aside the basic rights protections necessary for majority rule to function fairly, any other determinations about the scope of lesser rights should be set by Congress and state legislatures. Gun rights, then, shouldn’t be constitutionally protected.
And in 2016, Rolling Stone stated “it’s time” to repeal the 2nd amendment, and used “constitutional scholar” David S. Cohen to promote their position:
The liberty of some to own guns cannot take precedence over the liberty of everyone to live their lives free from the risk of being easily murdered. It has for too long, and we must now say no more.
This “scholar” must have completely skipped over Ben Franklin’s role in authoring the US Constitution when he studied the document:
Guys we have some work to do. pic.twitter.com/UWk7W6Q10U
— Lyndsey Fifield (@lyndseyfifield) March 25, 2018
Yes, the argument gun control has put forward is that they want to enact “common-sense gun reforms” that will reduce gun violence and “mass shootings” in the US. However, they could get everything on their wish list short of repeal of the 2nd amendment, and when it isn’t enough, they’ll be looking for someone else to blame…
…and they most certainly won’t be nice about it. No matter what the “March for our Lives” organizers say, 2nd amendment repeal is the ultimate goal of their movement. And if they get what they want…
…they are coming for your guns, and if necessary, from your cold dead hands. However, one must first ask these protesters – if they plan to confiscate firearms, will they equip firearms themselves to do so?