Former member of the U.S. Supreme Court, John Paul Stevens
TTAG
“The liveliest (and oldest) former member of the U.S. Supreme Court is at it again. John Paul Stevens, 93, served on the highest court in the land for an impressive 35 years, from 1975 until his retirement in June 2010,” Paul Barrett writes at Bloomberg Businessweek. “Known for his bow ties, brilliant legal mind, and striking transformation from Midwest Republican conservative to hero of the political left, Stevens remains an intellectual force to reckon with.” God, I hope not. Stevens utterly rejects the Heller ruling establishing an individual right to keep and bear arms. In fact, this is how he’d amend the Second Amendment: “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms when serving in the militia shall not be infringed.” His justification for the change is predictably short-sighted . . .
“Emotional claims that the right to possess deadly weapons is so important that it is protected by the federal Constitution distort intelligent debate about the wisdom of particular aspects of proposed legislation designed to minimize the slaughter caused by the prevalence of guns in private hands.”Emotional claims? Someone hasn’t been reading his history books . . . “James Madison made clear that, although the proposed Constitution offered sufficient guarantees against despotism by its checks and balances, the real deterrent to governmental abuse was the armed population,” David E. Vandercoy writes in The History of the Second Amendment. The awesome success of The Truth About Guns has really gone to the head of its founder Robert Farago. He seems to think he knows the law better than a former Justice of the Supreme Court. And his reasoning is so weak it's embarrassing.
Madison's explanation that an armed populace is necessary to prevent government from becoming tyrannical worked pretty well when the weapons owned by the citizenry were EXACTLY the same as those owned by the government. Nowadays, as anyone with half a brain knows, it's a different story. But that doesn't prevent the thoughtless gun nuts from spouting this nonsense over and over again.
After calling Justice Stevens' justification "short-sighted," Farago goes on to repeat this tired old nonsense as his own justification. Then, of course, the sycophantic commenters fall into line, nearly two hundred of them.
This is a good example of why the gun-rights movement is doomed to failure. There's usually no substance in what they say. It's smoke and mirrors, often making little or no sense, but repeated by legions of unthinking followers until it takes on a life of its own.
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