OPINION:
File this under Holy Cow — a former justice of the Supreme Court of the United States is actually out and about calling for the repeal of the Second Amendment.
Who? None other than John Paul Stevens, who served from 1975 to 2010. Stevens was a liberal voice on the court. But calling for an end to a core constitutional right — a basic God-given right that goes to an individual’s ability to protect self and family — is left of left.
It’s SCOTUS, meet Iran. And that’s not hyperbole.
Look at what Stevens wrote in part, in a New York Times op-ed: He said the Second Amendment is misunderstood and misinterpreted and should have no place in modern times. And, he called on the “March For Our Lives” movement to press for total repeal of the Bill of Right.
Enough of this nickel and diming demise of gun rights by targeting, say, assault-style weapons or bump stocks, he suggested. America needs to strike bigger.
“[T]he demonstrators should seek more effective and more lasting reform,” Stevens wrote. “They should demand a repeal of the Second Amendment.”
Why? What’s his logic? The usual liberal line, the same one that’s not based in fact or history but sounds good to the emotionally driven of the country.
Repealing the Second Amendment would reduce gun violence around the United States, he said.
“That simple but dramatic action would move Saturday’s marchers closer to their objective than any other possible reform,” Stevens wrote.
These are perilous times for God-given, individual rights, it seems.
When a former member of the U.S. Supreme Court calls for a complete ban on citizen gun rights — a total destruction of the constitutional clause that represents the single most powerful protection an individual possesses — then you know the country’s turned a corner down Despot Lane.
Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Sayyid Ali Hosseini Khamenei, just called for the same — for an end to the Second Amendment.
“No one dares apply the clear solution to the promotion of guns and homicide in America,” he tweeted in early March. “What’s the solution? It’s to make guns illegal.”
Stevens, an American jurist, has just thrown in with the supreme leader of Iran. There’s really nothing else that needs to be said about that except, once again: These are perilous times for the fate of the God-given versus government-granted. Patriots and those of America First mentality need to step up the fight and realize the left isn’t going to give, isn’t going to cede and, given this latest infusion of SCOTUS-tied anti-gun messaging, isn’t going to go quietly any time soon.
• Cheryl Chumley can be reached at cchumley@washingtontimes.com or on Twitter, @ckchumley.
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