Sometimes the young are wiser than their elders. Days after the survivors of the Stoneman Douglas slaughter stunned the world with the 800-city #MarchForOurLives and their brilliantly effective call for laws to stem the tide of gun violence, retired Supreme Court justice John Paul Stevens handed the gun lobby a rhetorical howitzer.
For years, that lobbys most effective way to shoot down proposed firearms regulations has been to insist, falsely, that any new prohibition would lead to the eventual ban of all firearms. It is easy for those who revile our lax gun laws to lose sight of how many Americans cherish the right of law-abiding citizens to keep guns at home for self-defense or hunting.
The NRAs strongest rallying cry has been: Theyre coming for our beloved Second Amendment. Enter Stevens, stage left, boldly calling for the amendments demise, thereby giving aid and comfort to the gun lobbys favorite argument.
The kids have been savvy enough to know better. They have reminded everyone that the Second Amendments right to bear arms, even as interpreted by a conservative Supreme Court and the right-leaning lower federal courts, is far from absolute: It permits Congress and the states to outlaw what the court in District of Columbia v. Heller called dangerous and unusual weapons and those not typically possessed by law-abiding citizens for lawful purposes, and to comprehensively regulate gun sales and the places guns can be carried. Over the past decade, the court has let stand bans on semiautomatic assault rifles, limits on the sale of large magazines and restrictions on the number of guns a person can stockpile. It has left no doubt that Congress can require universal gun registration, that states can forbid gun sales to anyone under 21, and that government can red-flag potentially dangerous purchasers, ban concealed carry and enact sweeping safety measures. Relying on that legal reality, the young have reassured Americans fearful of confiscation that they do not seek the repeal of the Second Amendment.
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Repealing the Second Amendment would eliminate that source of reassurance without even achieving the Parkland, Florida, students aims. It would not take the most lethal, military-grade weapons out of dangerous hands. Indeed, it wouldnt eliminate a single gun or enact a single gun regulation. It would instead make the passage of each proposed regulation more difficult. Worse, a repeal campaign would infuse the Second Amendment with an absolute anti- regulation meaning that only the gun lobby has given it.
Moreover, the Supreme Court has treated the Second Amendment as essentially codifying a preexisting fundamental right of each person to possess the means of self-defense in the home. The court
