In the aftermath of the horror at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, Justice John Paul Stevens’s
2018 call
to repeal the Second Amendment has been making headlines again. Stevens argued that until the 2008
District of Columbia v.
Heller
decision, the Supreme Court never recognized an individual right to gun ownership, and it has endorsed forms of gun control throughout our history. The Second Amendment had a limited purpose: Given the founders’ fears of a standing army, it guaranteed the right of state militias to arm themselves for war, but, in an age when over a million Americans serve in the military, that concern is now an irrelevant “relic of the 18th century.” Congress shouldn’t wait for the Court to overturn
Heller
, Stevens concluded, but should cut to the chase and “get rid of the Second Amendment.”
