John Paul Stevens: Repeal the Second Amendment
Retired Supreme Court justice, John Paul Stevens called for a repeal of the Second Amendment in the pages of the New York Times today. He says that he was impressed by “the type of civic engagement schoolchildren and their supporters demonstrated in Washington” this past weekend, so he’s advising us to repeal the Second Amendment to honor them;
That support is a clear sign to lawmakers to enact legislation prohibiting civilian ownership of semiautomatic weapons, increasing the minimum age to buy a gun from 18 to 21 years old, and establishing more comprehensive background checks on all purchasers of firearms. But the demonstrators should seek more effective and more lasting reform. They should demand a repeal of the Second Amendment.
Concern that a national standing army might pose a threat to the security of the separate states led to the adoption of that amendment, which provides that “a well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.” Today that concern is a relic of the 18th century.
Stevens claims that repeal of the amendment would be simple – even though only the repeal of the 18th Amendment, making alcohol illegal, has ever been accomplished in our history.
The process is hardly simple. It would take two-thirds of the House and the Senate to ratify an amendment, with two-thirds of state legislatures calling for a Constitutional Convention and then three-quarters of each of the state legislatures would have to approve the amendment traditionally within seven years from the votes in Congress.
Stevens calls the Second Amendment a relic, and I guess he’d know, being a relic himself. While he’s at it, he can go ahead and declare the Third Amendment protecting citizens from being forced to house soldiers a relic, too.
The Times uses this graphic to help the senile old coot make his point;
Scary, huh?
Here’s my graphic to convince you to repeal the 1st Amendment;
Category: Dumbass Bullshit
I just rolled my eyes so hard I saw my own brain stem.
If there was only a like button….
Now ^^^THAT^^^ is funny!
This reinforces how important the last election was. Who knows what type of Justice Hillary would have appointed. It is not hard to imagine how she would have tilted the SCOTUS.
Tah-dah! Bingo. It is that tenuous, that a lawyer or two can interpret a case to do irreparable damage to the 2nd Amendment by relegating its usefulness to bygone days, as Stevens has.
It wouldn’t be the Second Amendment that would get wrecked.
It would be the entire country.
There is no way in hell that Americans, and not just gun owning Americans, would stand by and let some asswipe confiscate our firearms.
As a student of history myself, I know for a fact that it is the Second Amendment that has kept America as free as it is.
There is no doubt in my mind or in most other Patriotic Americans minds that America would have fallen in the 1800’s if not the early 1900’s if the Second Amendment protections weren’t there.
Even Yamato knew that there would be a rifle behind every blade of grass.
I watched the series on Amazon, “The Man in the High Castle” It was totally bogus in the precept that Americans would have stood by and let the Nazi’s take over East of the Rockies and the Japanese take the West Coast.
Absolutely horrible ending to the entire mess too…
Screw stevens, the senile, moronic a.h.! He is too stupid to know the kids are paid by soros, the dumocrap party, NWO, trilateral and bilderbergers…all liberal communist assholes!!
This is the biggest reason, according to exit polls, that she WASN’T voted into office. Supreme Court selections.
Stevens was anti-gun through his entire Supreme Court tenure. At age 98, he should not be practicing law. He has advocated changing several amendments in the past and has spoken against the 2nd as well as the death penalty. Dipshit.
Which goes to show how Liberalism is a Mental Disorder, liberals do all they can to spare the lives of convicted murderers on Death Row while openly espousing the wanton killings of unborn children.
Hopefully, that lefty bastard won’t be around much longer. He should be concentrating on changing his Depends instead of our Constitution.
I know a guy that knows a guy who says that this OpEd was written by Sarah Hartman Sloan, Stevens’s law clerk, whose father-in-law is a WaPo columnist.
If true, you heard it here first. 🙂
Wouldn’t be the first time something like that happened.
There is a certain dishonest, disbarred, disgraced and now deceased attorney who I am pretty sure forged a letter from a former CO of the USS Yorktown that recommended he be made an Honorary CPO. The CO was in a nursing home and in the last stages of Alzhiemers when he supposedly penned the letter.
Who’d da thunk a lying lawer would pull a stunt like that? Surprise, Surprise, Sergeant!
I can’t imagine that another lying lawer scrunt who likely never tried a lawsuit in front of a jury would do something like that at the renowned fake news agitprop org know as the WAPO.
Correction: FIL not a Wapo columnist.
FIL former editor of Slate Magazine.
“civic engagement”
No Justice Stevens, that was an anti civil rights demonstration.
You were an embarassmemt on the bench and are carrying on that tradition in retirement.
We should pull apart our nations foundational document because the usual Progressive cabal is using a bunch of spoiled brats throwing a hissy fit to advance their agenda.
Fuck you, John
Yeah, repeal the 2nd Amendment, pass Gun-grab Laws. First life everywhere in the USA would degrade to like it is in Chicago, then it will degrade to the quality of life enjoyed by everyday Venezuelan Citizens. SCREW Retarded (*OOPS*, Retired) Justice Stevens and his liberal gobbledygook.
Just more far left wing dribble from the New York Slimes. Typical.
Advertisement is hitting my phone hard today. I cannot read anything here in TAH without a “congratulations, you win!”.
Clear your browser cache.
Stop visiting sketchy sites.
Pay the ransom and stay away from the pron.
Never feed the extortionists. It only encourages them
Hey, they’re just trying to make a buck.
“Pron”?
intentional misspelling of porn. don’t know why either.
Because workplace filters search for the correctly spelled word and block TAH from their network.
Ya gotta take it easy on th Anime pr0n, Yef!
How does one repeal an inalienable Right that is recognized as such by the 2nd Amendment?
The 18th Amendment, did not violate a God Given right to drink alcohol.
I would think that any attempt to repeal any of the Bill of Rights would be a violation of the Constitution in and of itself.
Even if they try, are they really going to get a 2/3rd majority in both Federal Houses, let alone a 2/3rds majority of State Houses?
If they succeed, they will initiate the next not-so Civil War.
This is asinine.
Minor point, Atkron: while 2/3 of each house of Congress must approve any proposed amendment prior to it being sent to states for ratification (or, alternatively, 2/3 of the state legislatures must pass resolutions calling for a Constitutional convention) per Article V of the Constitution, 3/4 of the states must ratify any constitutional amendment before it becomes effective.
They’re welcome to try. But good luck getting 38 of 50 state legislatures to agree to any proposed amendment deleting the 2nd Amendment from the Constitution.
I knew it was something like that, for some reason I was thinking the 2/3rds majority extended into State houses in order for the ratification to take place….to meet the 3/4 state majority.
Thanks for setting me straight.
Sigh – I fear my state of MN would vote to ratify.
Shack.
These naïve gun grabbers have absolutely no understanding of the magnitude of the national nightmare that would ensue if they ever attempted to implement the forced confiscation of firearms from law-abiding citizens.
Gun grabbers are all sheep, so apparently they assume that everyone else will behave like passive, compliant sheep as well.
I might be a little worried about the aggressive women who wear pussy hats and shriek like the devil.
Not so much worried about their beta male counterparts.
You misspelled ‘Omega’.
Old Manchu, those “aggressive” women in pussy hats are only like that when they are in a bunch, and only when told to act that way. They don’t have enough working brain power to read written directions without a dictionary.
If tomorrow, the 2nd Amendment were repealed and statutes enacted to make private gun ownership illegal, the usual devices for inducing compliance at first. There would be an amnesty lasting six months or a year. There would be tax breaks given of one sort or another. There would be stepped-up and concerted police efforts to get guns. Then the “extras” would be added, granting ‘finder’s fees’ to turn-in those possessing guns, like NY tried. It would take time and each violent episode involving a gun would prompt additional legislation to empower gov’t to get the guns. Examples would have to be made of solid citizens caught with guns. They would have to go to prison. Companies of all sizes would make it policy not to hire anyone (or retain anyone) with a gun-possession conviction. The mind boggles with the possibilities that would present themselves and be created in order to get compliance, all w/o police raids.
Said people being made “non-persons” like in George Orwell’s “1984”.
They pussy hats, “Antifas”, and their ilk are only dangerous in crowds where their mob mentality takes over.
A shotgun is useful in those situations. Crowds tend to disperse fairly rapidly when the danger of being shot by a load of 12ga 00 buck becomes real. 12ga flechette rounds would be nice to have in that circumstance as well.
*The pussy hats….*
pffft
In Courier training (actually weapons escort) we were taught that shooting at the ground in front of the crowd was a very good way to disperse them- spreads the pellets out at ankle level.
As I always tell my friends when they ask me: “What would you do if (entity) came for your guns”?
Me: “Bullets first.”
-this- Injun is not getting herded into any boxcar, nor getting deathmarched to Oklahoma.
If you wait until you hear the shower heads hissing, it is a bit late to start fighting Fascists.
Liberals know that members of an Armed Populace will not peacefully march into boxcars.
Senility is a terrible thing to behold.
Of course, with Stevens it’s always been kind of hard to tell if it was senility or temporary idiocy at work in any “head-scratcher” statement or opinion. He’s been all over the map throughout his career, though seemingly trending more liberal as he got
senileolder.Senile, Hondo. The correct word is senile.
Can you say it? I know that you can.
Per Merriam-Webster:
senility: the quality or state of being senile; the physical and mental decline associated with old age; the deterioration of cognitive functioning associated with old age
At 98, Stevens would seem a prime candidate for one or all of those definitions.
FWIW: I kinda thought the sarcasm intended in the last sentence (via using strikeout font on the word “senile”) was fairly obvious. (smile)
“Penile” is also appropriate for John Paul Stevens.
Fuck this senile old bastard! I hope somebody takes him out with a 9″ frying pan!
Do you have a high capacity skillet?
I have a No. 5 15″ cast iron skillet with a conspicuous grip and insulation that prevents my hand from being burned if I have time to heat it up before using it in a self defense event.
My wife has an assault pan.
I’m scared of her.
We’ll be married for 25 years, April 3rd and fortunately I don’t have life insurance she can cash in on.
The nice thing is, many of us are worth more alive than we are dead. So, we survive. 🙂
I’m safe because if she kills me she gets a great life insurance policy but has to handle the kids by herself.
Just make sure that it’s strong enough to withstand the impact of an empty head, okay?
You don’t want to damage the equipment, you know.
Why waste a perfectly good frying pan; he is 98 after all. Just be patient.
It’s good he’s off the bench but look at Ginsburger. She’s witnessed first hand the signing of the Constitution and she’s still alive.
Dianne Feinstein is slightly older than sand yet she’s still in office.
Soros came up with all the torture during the Spanish Inquisition.
Relic… his word(?). So if the Constitution is antiquated, worthy of destruction, let us topple Free Markets. They are relics; just like the Magna Carta, citizen representation by an elected body, Jurisprudence, the Bible and other canon. The Golden Rule.
Either we permit anarchy by tearing down the evolution of systems, the American Experiment, or emplace the Ultimate Law: declaration that all multicellular organisms are illegal.
His logic applied.
Supreme Court Justice my arse.
He and his ilk are the relics, and they howl from the dustheap of history
A last attempt to build a legacy, hears the reaper a’comin’.
Yes, then we could have anarchy and mob rule. That has worked out well throughout history. I love how the so-called “liberals” want to jettison the rule of law and our Constitution whenever they are inconvenient to their totalitarian master plan to run everyone’s lives.
They can’t even steal an election or topple a president with access to the greatest information network ever created.
Stalin just hit 10,000 RPM.
He’s a relic that has no problem talking about other symbols as “relics” because even if they were removed, he would still be taken care of, protected, supported by armed security, continue to receive an obscenely high pension from the gummint, and not have to worry about anyone unseemly breaking into his “castle” without swift action occurring against them.
I hate replying to my own stuff, especially days after and I’m sure no one will read this, but my brain housing group was doing its thing and I came up with this:
This fucking moron took the Civil Oath of Office, analogous to the one given by Service Members.
I’m pretty fucking sure there’s a line in there about upholding that relic, you half fig of a man.
Well the lest side of Vermont is trying to ban our 10 round mags, bump stocks and the F35 this week.
They can have my F35 when they pry it from my cold, dead hands! 😀
Our forefathers never could have envisioned powered flight…
But surely they envisioned some form of an automatic weapon. All that muzzle reloading had to have sparked some day dreaming.
Stop making my lecture to you difficult by stateing facts!
-sips soy latte, trying to look aggressive-
Powderhorns! Outlaw powderhorns! Nobody needs a high-capacity powderhorn!
Ex-PH2, I alway wondered why in some old photos of frontier men way back then, were showing them having two powder horns strapped around their waist or chest.
I came to the conclusion that one was for powder and the other was for “toting” their “hootch”. (grin)
One for priming used a finer grain of powder (the smaller of the two), the other for the charge. Some used the same powder; however, a smaller grain ignites quicker.
I know you’re being facetious, Skyjumper (Airborne!), but just in case there is a reader who doesn’t know:
Two powderhorns were required when using a flintlock. One held the courser-grained powder that went down the barrel, the other the finer-grained powder that went in the pan.
The hooch was best kept in a paraffin or beeswax lined wooden canteen.
I respectfully disagree with you on the hootch in a beeswax-lined canteen GB, Distilled Spirits would degrade and dissolve said wax. Now a wooden canteen could hold it as long as it’s kept wet on the inside, many others I’ve done Civil War Re-enactments with used wooden canteens and they said you have to keep water in them so they stay watertight.
OK, I’m corrected, API. I’ve never carried my hooch in a canteen during re-enactments (Furtrade/Texas Revolution period) but have used beeswax-lined vessels for drinking. I’ve traded up to a tin cup now, though.
I still have a beeswax-lined metal canteen I used in Civil War Reenactments and the first thing they told me when I bought it was to NOT use it for booze for that reason.
That same wax was how they stayed regular back in those days.
I will never give up my powder horns. What will we muzzle loaders use to hold our powder and keep it dry? “First, they came for the high capacity magazines, and I said nothing. Next, then they wanted the powder horns. Then they came for me.” Seem to recall someone saying that somewhere once.
It may be old-school, slow, and all that, but a .50 patched round ball in front of 70g of FFFg will still put the hurt on an intruder.
I’m working on a ca. 1740 powder horn now. Have the neck fluted and dyed; currently working on the main design (Charle Towne, South Carolina, ca 1740) up the Cooper River to one of my ancestors homes: Mulberry Castle.
That is, I’m trying to work on it while I’m simultaneously making a flint wallet and a hunting bag. Just finished a copy of Kit Carson’s bullet bag.
OldManchu, there were actually working a number of working “semi-auto” rifles available during near the time frames of the Revolutionary War.
One was the “Kalthof Repeater” used in the 1600’s, the “Cookson Repeater” and another was the “Girandoni Air Rifle”.
https://wikivisually.com/wiki/Kalthoff_repeater
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cookson_repeater
“actually working a number of working ”
Sorry about the sentence mutilation, my drugs must have not kicked in yet. 😉
NEED MORE CAFFEINE, TOO!!
Great. Now I want one.
Envision? Heck they had their rapid fire weapon! The privateer Retaliation had two navalised organ guns when taken by LT Lloyd commanding the HMS Penguin off of Newfoundland. Organ guns were used to augment swivel guns while they were being reloaded. The Founders could appreciate the benefits of ROF. Of course we all knew that since American history it’s widely taught in school.
Its the full semi auto pistol grip in the cockpit I think.
Any pistol grip almost drives the leftards as crazy as “that thing that goes up in the back.”
But luckily, only from the unwashed masses and peasant folk. The well-to-do and members of the politik will be exempt as they are of a higher class, a nobility if you will.
The worst part of that is, the unwashed masses who support them think they will be treated the same as the nobility, which they won’t. They’ll just continue to be lowly subjects and servants of the upper class.
Just remember that this drooling fuckwad was nominated by Gerald Ford in 1975. The Repubs have been nominating these types of undercover liberals for decades. Just think Souter and Roberts. Had Jeb Bush become POTUS, he would have nominated someone of similar ilk to the SCOTUS. There is a reason the GOP is known as THE STUPID PARTY !!!
They’re always willing to give the left an inch. The left then demands a mile. Which is why they hate Trump. Though it seems like he’s got too many RINO and/or deep state advisors. He never should have signed the omnibus spending bill. At least he was able to show the Democrats as the hypocrites they are on the “dreamers”.
Dems controlled the House forever in those days, and most higher court judges were considered moderates. Stevens started centrist and moved further left as the years wore on, think he ended up far left.
Souter did the same thing, and Roberts is doing the leftward move now. Sure seems like a pattern…
Early in his SCOTUS career, Stevens is held to have been generally (though not exclusively) conservative as a jurist. But apparently living for decades in DC made him lose touch with reality and drift leftward.
Or perhaps he began experience a very slow onset of senility starting around age 60 or so.
FWIW: one idiot on Twitter was making political hay of the fact that “Stevens was a Republican calling for abolition of the 2nd Amendment”. The key term there is “was”. In 2007, Stevens was asked point-blank in an interview if he still considered himself a Republican. Stevens declined to answer that question.
Someone losing touch with reality living in DC? I’m shocked!
The two parties back in the day weren’t so stridently ideological. There was such a thing as conservative democrats & liberal republicans. Bill Clinton is now virtually PNG’d from the Democrat party because of his conservativish stances as POTUS on things like work requirements for welfare & toughed policies on illegal immigration. Of course Bubba was forced to work w/ then Speaker Newt Gingrich to get anything done.
Yep. Given my age and where I grew up, I certainly remember Conservative Democrats.
Unfortunately they seemed to have died off during the 1980s or early 1990s. Why, it’s almost as if their party took a “hard left” sometime during that time frame.
Likewise with the GOP.
Espouse any of Reagan’s policies, and you’re virtually certain to be labeled an extremist.
Nevermind the fact while as governor he signed probably the most liberal abortion bill at the time, and let’s not even discuss his time as President (raising taxes, Gun Control Act of 1986, Amnesty, etc.)
And it seems like it has been the Stupid Party for about 50 years. However, the other party is the Corrupt Party, which has now also become the Crypto-communist Party.
Hmm – the Corrupt Crypto-Communist Party. That would have the acronym “CCCP”.
Quite apropos. (smile)
Too bad we can’t pass a law that makes them change to this name and acronym, as it would be a “Truth in Advertising” measure.
Thank God for the brilliance the founders had to make the Constitution so hard to amend!
I can only imagine what kids are being taught now. I remember around the 4th grade being taught that the Constitution was a “living document” able to be updated and changed with the times. In actuality, it’s an immutable document written in plain language that takes significant effort and time to change. Unless you do what the left does and appoint activist judges who just change the meanings of words to suit their perverse activism from the bench.
Actually I support this effort completely.
See, the problem with liberals regarding gun laws is that they know sweet fuck all about (a) guns and (b) law. That means they’re bringing a knife, or more accurately, a cotton ball, to this particular gunfight.
Think about it: As Hondo pointed out above, the only way a Constitutional amendment can be repealed is with another Constitutional amendment. Which requires the assent of 38 states’ legislatures.
This is one of the areas where the Democrats “advantage” in numbers gives them absolutely no advantage because California with its 33 million residents gets exactly the same percentage of the vote as Wyoming with it’s 600,000.
If 13 states refuse to ratify an amendment, it dies. I can name at least 25 states right off the top of my head that would NEVER ratify this amendment.
So I encourage the gun-grabbers to pursue this strategy. Let them break their teeth on the impregnable wall of the Constitution. It will consume their time and money and it will ultimately be for naught.
you are assuming that the constitutional methods will be followed.
What actually happens at the collapse, is the amendment is merely proclaimed, the courts agree and just like that, liberty dies.
Followed by the slow and painful death of the people through starvation and neglect
Are you kidding ??? Collapse ????
With all these crazy fuckers running around ???
Not a chance !!!!!
These are just the ones that come here, go to a Gun Show on the weekend and watch them come out of the woodwork !!!
That’s the best part, we crazy fuckers are everywhere !!!
Just got done listening to Ben Shapiro brilliantly rebut Stevens’s bullshit, while also handily demonstrating that Stevens is a dipshit.
Is there a video or recording of that anywhere?
Daily Wire’s YouTube channel.
https://youtu.be/R6ZF4Ei6Of8
https://www.dailywire.com/news/28721/former-supreme-court-justice-repeal-second-ben-shapiro
The article Mr. Shapiro wrote.
It seems that the Anti-Federalists have been proven right and the Federalists proven wrong. The Anti-Federalists were the folks who insisted on specific limits on Federal gov’t. power, hence the Bill of Rights.
I always thought that the argument that we didn’t need a Bill of Rights is because Congress wasn’t given the power in the Constitution to infringe on those rights to begin with.
Startling how centralized we’ve become.
I would add there are a number of State constitutions that permit an individual to bear arm. So even if the 2A was somehow via the magical wish granting unicorn repealed, depending on the state you reside in, your state cannot infringe on your right to bear arms.
Rich, my take on the Second Amendment is that it doesn’t necessarily give the individual the “right to bear arms” (that had already had been declared an unalienable right), but rather the Second Amendment was set in place to PREVENT the government from confiscating arms from individuals.
So the long & short of it in my opinion, is that no form of Government, be it Federal or State, can infringe on the peoples rights to own arms.
JMOYMMV
Prior to 1865 the BoR did not apply to the states. See Barron v. Baltimore, 32 U.S. 243 (1833.) IMO probably the 2nd most important Constitutional law case if the early 19th century after Marbury v. Madison.
Technically speaking it still doesn’t apply DIRECTLY to the states, The BoR itself only restrains the Federal government.
However, since 1865, most of the original BoR provisions (except for the 3rd amendment) have been “incorporated” to the states via the 14th Amendment which prohibits states from infringing on “fundamental” rights.
About two years ago, The supreme court ruled in Heller VS DC that firearms ownership was indeed an individual right under the second amendment.
If Mr. Stevens thinks as he seems to about the 2nd Amendment, that it is almost an artifact, a curiosity, a mere wobble in the brains of Adam, Jefferson, Franklin and all the rest of them, then what is he?
The best term for him is irrelevant.
Revoke his pension and see how happy he is about that.
Oh, and for what it’s worth, the best pens were constructed out of crow quills. Sturdier than feathers of other birds. Ravens were even more superior.
So that would explain the raven saying “Nevermore” as Mr. Poe yanked a quill from his arse.
AFAIK, there is no Constitutionally protected right to a pension for judges.
I suppose that an argument could be made that pensions for elected governmental officials is un-Constitutional.
Shall we offer up a national petition to make pensions for elected governmental officials illegal and void, and demand refunds from all those who have been receiving them? I’d go for that.
That’ll happen as soon as Congress creates a “term limits” law and approves it in both houses to send to POTUS for signature. But, not holding my breath. It might take a couple years, or 400.
Term limits apply at the federal level. The states have to impose their own term limits on their Congress critters. Until that happens, this mess will continue and yeah, dynastic succession has been thisclose more than once.
Term limits on Congress have already been tried at the state level around 20 years ago. They were and shot down by the SCOTUS. (FWIW, IMO the decision was probably correct based on the actual language of the US Constitution.) The ruling in that case was that states cannot impose additional conditions/restrictions on holding Federal office over and above those contained in the US Constitution. The case was U.S. Term Limits, Inc. v. Thornton, 514 U.S. 779 (1995).
While that case involved state restrictions on Federal office, the SCOTUS had previously ruled (in Powell v. McCormack, 395 U.S. 486 (1969)) that the list of qualifications for membership in Congress specified in the Constitution was exhaustive and that Congress was bound by those qualifications regarding seating Adam Clayton Powell after one of his reelections (Congress had initially refused to seat him). It’s thus a virtual certainty that the SCOTUS would invalidate any Federal term limits law based on the precedents set by those two cases.
Bottom line: term limits for Federal elective office (and Federal judges, for that matter) will require a Constitutional amendment. Though I’d regard a Constitutional amendment imposing Congressional term limits as far more likely than a repeal of the 2nd Amendment, I still don’t recommend holding your breath.
Stevens probably jacks off to Roger Taney’s Scott vs Sanford opinion.
The only good thing that I can say about the proposal is that he is advocating making guns illegal through the process proscribed by the Constitution and not through legislation from the bench.
Point.
Ah, but he also took the time to point out that the Court got the Heller case dead wrong. He opposed the majority decision in Heller. So, don’t give him credit. He would have been happy to legislate from the Big Bench.
I do not believe Stevens is senile. I am grateful that he has articulated that which nearly all others on the Left have purposefully refused to articulate, that repeal of the 2nd Amendment is the ultimate goal. This, to me, truly comes down to political philosophy, whether one believes that government is inherently good and is to be trusted or one believes otherwise. Witness the pic of the woman the other day holding a sign asking whether freedom is worth our safety. There are distinct camps when it comes to one’s view of government. Like most of you, I do not trust government, the mindless bureaucrats, the political careerists, or the lawyers in black robes. I believe in God, self-reliance, private property, and personal freedom. Many others in this land do not. They don’t have the least bit of comprehension regarding thsese things or our history, save that the Founders were slave owners or slave tolerant.
Stevens was born senile.
I was being polite in referring to him as “senile” above, 2/17.
My actual opinion is that over the years he’s become corrupted through years of living in DC and is now little more than a “useful idiot” for the political Left.
No comment. YOU all said it all and I agree.
The fact that this point, background checks on ammo and all the other crap is kinda scary. These friggen libs need to understand two things about the 2nd Amendment…it exists as not a right of the people but as a warning to the government that the people are armed. It also serves to remind us to keep our powder dry and weapons oiled. I’m so glad I retired in the Republic of Texas.
One question, How long did it take to pass the Equal rights Amendment? Answer: Congress passed the ERA in 1978 and sent it to the states for ratification. Forty years later it remains unratified. At last count it still required three three more states to pass on it.
If the snowflakes proposed their 2nd Amendment repeal bill today, most of them would be dead before it ever got passed by congress. It only took the ERA 51 years to get out of congress and begin the ratification process.
Fun fact; there are unratified amendments that have been waiting on the states since the introduction of the original Bill of Rights.
The ERA isn’t a particularly good example, as it is no longer an Amendment pending ratification. It’s revised deadline for ratification expired in 1982. The ERA was actually sent to the states for ratification during the Nixon Administration, in March 1972. It originally had a deadline of March 1979 for ratification (7 years); that was later extended by Congress until June 1982). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equal_Rights_Amendment#Congressional_passage A total of 33 Constitutional Amendments have been passed by Congress and sent to the states for approval. Of those, 27 were eventually adopted (they are Amendments 1 through 27 of the Constitution). Two – the aforementioned ERA and the arguably misnamed “DC Voting Rights Amendment” (in reality the amendment created 2 senators and 1 representative for DC, to be elected by DC voters) – had definite ratification deadlines and failed to secure enough states approval for adoption prior to those deadlines. The remaining four older Constitutional Amendments passed by Congress and sent to the states had no deadline for ratification – and indeed include one sent to the states for ratification with the original Bill of Rights. Those are thus technically still pending approval by the states (don’t hold your breath). They are: (1) the Congressional Apportionment Amendment (would create a population-based formula for Congressional districts, 1789); (2) the Titles of Nobility Amendment (would strip US citizenship from anyone who accepts a foreign title of nobility, 1810); (3) the Corwin Amendment (passed by Congress and sent to the states in 1861 shortly before the Civil War as an attempt to prevent same; it would have protected slavery where it existed); and (4) the Child Labor Amendment (would have empowered the Federal government to regulate child labor, 1924). Only the first two came close to ratification “way back when” (though due to the admission of other states since, they’re nowhere near ratification today). The other two never came close. Personal opinion: of the four amendments still pending, at least two would be monumentally bad ideas (Apportionment and Corwin). The Child Labor Amendment appears moot today. And I’d argue that the Nobility Amendment needs to be re-written to… Read more »
Amen to all of the above!
God bless you all
Keep your mits off of my fucking guns!
The take-away from all if this is that the left is once again doing what they do best: Indulging in wishful thinking and trying to live in the imaginary world of their dreams instead of the real world.
If the 2nd Amendment disappeared into a puff of smoke tomorrow, the 300+ million guns in private hands would not. Furthermore the 44 states that have State guarantees on the RKBA would not disappear either. The ONLY thing that would be different is that gun laws would be challenged on a different basis than they are now. That’s it.
Stevens might just as well argue that the liberals should build a time machine to send a robot assassin back to 1951 to kill Eugene Stoner before he could design the AR platform. I mean, he might as well propose that since it’s about as likely to happen as the repeal of the 2nd Amendment.
“Stevens might just as well argue that the liberals should build a time machine to send a robot assassin back to 1951 to kill Eugene Stoner before he could design the AR platform.”
SkyNet approves this course of action, issues RFP.
Hey, this is nothing but a herd mentality finding a voice and all of you know it.
Now snap out of it and face them down! You’ll give up guns when they give up the right to vote and move about freely, with no ID required –
Oh, wait! You have to have an ID in every state now, don’t you? Well, that bit of freedom went flying right out the window while they were patting themselves on the back over requiring IDs, so I’d say add requiring a valid ID to vote would be a REAL good idea.
But then, I can remember when you didn’t have to have a driver’s license to drive a car.
No drivers license to drive a car?
Dear God, how old are you?
Was Thomas Jefferson your Civics Teacher or something ?????
Listen, sonny, I can remember things that would make your head spin.
I remember:
Being on the internet before there were GUIs, and when “windows” were only in walls and cars.
Computers only communicating by print-outs.
Leaving the house to play outside for hours, and my parents having no idea where I was – but knowing that if I misbehaved they’d know before I got home.
The milkman leaving our milk and eggs on the doorstep.
The Fuller Brush Man.
“You’ll be for B-4 before you drive 6 city blocks.”
Burma-Shave signs.
Working as a gas-pump jockey.
Riding the bus downtown for 10-cents, alone, in order to go to the library.
Attic fans in Houston to keep cool. Swamp coolers, as well.
Party lines. And the telephone was rotary-dial, and lived in a niche in the hallway wall.
Mail-order guns in the Montgomery Wards and Sears catalogs.
Avis Rent-a-Horse (on Westheimer, outside of Houston).
I could go on.
And to think, I feel old because I remember watching the Berlin Wall come down on TV as a little kid…
I watched the first Apollo landing on TV as a kid, TOW.
As a kid, I went with my father, a ham-radio guy, to change out the tapes on the recorder in their ham-shack recording Sputnik – and heard the signal myself.
I was cooking on a gas range when I was 6. My mother showed me how to light it, how to make the oven work, and how to grease a cake pan and dust it with flour.
Otherwise, she left me alone. I found my mother’s old 1953 Better Homes & Gardens cookbook, with those old recipe versions, so I’m prepared to make one go-round of the old recipe and one of the newer version with modern ingredients, to see if there is any real difference.
My sister and I both helped with canning and prepping stuff for freezing, and my brother, who was 6 at the time, took a bunch of old oil lamps and converted them to electric lamps, chimney and all.
I remember the Mickey Mouse Club, with Spin & Marty, and yes, the milkman did bring milk to the house and when we were doing stuff like getting vegs ready for the freezer, the ice man would show up with square foot sized ice cubes, and then he’d give the three of us soem chunks of ice in a tub, so that we could have something nice and cold on a hot summer day.
When we moved into town, I could take the bus by myself downtown to the library and sit on the floor in the stacks, and read all the books I wanted to read.
You could get into the movies for $.15, popcorn was $.10, and American Bandstand was where a lot of singers got a start. I never did get to see ‘Battle for Apache Pass’ or ‘Verzcruz’, but I did see ‘Shane’ and ‘High Noon’.
Virtue signaling by an irrelevant person. The gun grabbers don’t want to do the actual hard work of going out and campaigning nationwide for the repeal of an amendment. They just want to issue an order, decree, fiat, ukase or papal bull, and then have a big progressive circle jerk.
I am inclined to agree with that assessment. School children, as Stevens called some of the protesters, don’t have a clue. They just want mommy government to make the bad gun go away. They are clueless–but they did something. The guy who spends his day digging ditches and then filling them in with the dirt he removed enjoys the same sense of satisfaction each evening. He worked hard, feels good about that, and accomplished nothing useful.
Hey When I was 17 I knew everything……
Wait, you can get paid for that? Must be a government job. Where do I apply?
If you are talking about a job in which you arrive late, stretch a weekend into three days, leave around 1 or 2 on Fridays, and take twice the lunch time allotted every day you appear at the office, bullshit for at least two hrs every day–except the one 6.5 hr day in which you get the entire week’s worth of work done and then complain about it, most any civilian gov’t job will do.
Did you know that the Supreme Court has its own police force? It is called, not surprisingly, the Supreme Court of the United States Police Department. Its mission includes–you guessed it–protecting the Supremes. Nice.
And while I am fixated on this topic, I don’t want to miss the opportunity to say something about the protests this past weekend. What the kids are being fed is a load of bullshit. Sure, kids want to be safe from being shot in school and the adults should be hanging their heads in shame for not helping to ensure the kids’ safety. More gun laws won’t do it. Even repeal of the 2nd Amendment wouldn’t do it. And I really have my doubts, courtesy of a moron PA school superintendent, that setting up buckets of rocks in each classroom will do it. What will do it? You know what. So, why are the adults allowing the kids to be unprotected? That really is the shame of it all but, then again, most school buses don’t have seatbelts, do they? “For the children” my ass.
Because if they do what needs to be done and give the kids close to the safety they themselves enjoy, the narrative of a gun being only evil is blown up.
I’ve been considering cause and effect. It seems to me what drives a lot of the anti-gun agenda is that the New York Times and others are now trying to go after a global cosmopolitan audience. Such being targeted, for example, at a self-identified elite which pines for the days of the British Empire. Such a class hates guns, Brexit, and despises those who work in the “trades” or who don’t recognize the importance of their “betters.”
This elite also attaches great importance to the activities of the British royal family, among other things. It’s no coincidence the current CEO of the NYT is Mark Thompson, former Director General of the BBC. What’s also true is that the British are not shy about pushing an anti-gun agenda on Americans, and have been doing it since 1776.
This cosmopolitan class amounts to the people Hillary Clinton was identifying with when she made the “deplorables” comment. In her world, apparently, the term “egalitarian” is used as a pejorative. What’s also unfortunate is that a large portion of New York City media spends an unhealthy amount of time reacting to what the NYT does on any given day. Wag the dog.
Went outside today and looked around at some rocks. Nothing even slightly comforting about them. Maybe it’s because these are free range rocks, not the pretty polished kind which hang out in buckets. Yeah, that’s it. These are uncivilized country rocks.
So where are they planning to acquire all the assault rocks they will need to retrofit every classroom in the country? What are the specs on the buckets? Or can each child ring their own individual bucket filled with rocks they select themselves?
We need a committee.
They won’t use assault rocks, those are dangerous.
They’ll use bongs and dildos to implement their revolution. (Against citizens with 300 million personally owned firearms.)
According to the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration, there were 304 child fatalities in school transportation related accidents between 2005 and 2014. Since the Founders couldn’t have foreseen the big yellow school bus, I think they should be outlawed entirely.
OT, but did anyone catch Emma Gonzalez’ admission in her speech the other day that she and others bullied Cruz? She followed up by saying, “to those of you who say we shouldn’t have ostracized him, you didn’t know this kid. We did!”
Nikolas Cruz deserves the death penalty, posthaste. He is culpable for the murder of 17 innocents. No question about it.
That said, what kind of person bullies someone and then, even after seeing the horrific fruits of that bullying, justifies it, all while viciously attacking an unconnected group and its millions of constituents, none of whom have done anything wrong?
I’m so over these “kids”. What a shitty group of people.
Well, the sad thing is that these “kids” don’t realize how bent over they are being bent by Democrats, the Media, anti-gun activists, etc., in order to pursue THEIR interests with zero concern for these dumb teenagers.
Once the fad of these kids is over, they’ll toss them over their shoulder like an empty beer can.
There’s all kinds of these gems in these protests. When you get the kids off the script their handlers have given them, you see the expected opinions of a bunch of teenagers.
Another good one, from one of the speakers, talking about metal detectors and clear backpacks, etc, in addition to gun restrictions, to paraphrase: “It’s not fair that I have to be punished because other people do bad things!”
The real problem is that these “kids” are doing the bullying, admitting to it, and no one is stopping them. Then it goes from picking on someone they see as vulnerable at school and getting away with it, to the work place where it is not allowed, where behavior is monitored in every way, and where young adults who can’t behave themselves in polite society become part of the proverbial revolving door in employment, but they’ll still blame other people for what they’ve done.
They need a heavy dose of their own medicine, something on the order of dropping a brick on them. When kids of any age are not punished for bad behavior, the result is what we saw in February.
There is a fundamental difference in how a conservative views the Constitution and the Government versus a Communist/Democrat (can no longer tell them apart). The constitution theoretically places a limit on what the Government can do to the states or to a citizen. I would say this is the perspective from which the constitution was written.
The left looks at the Constitution and the Government and asks what can we do to limit what the states and the people can do. Except of course when it suits the goals of the statists. Like banning magazines that hold more than 10 rounds of ammunition.
The 18th Amendment was an attempt by the government to limit what the states and the people can do. It didn’t work out so well. Almost every law and regulation is an affront to the framers of the constitution. Every law and regulation comes with it the threat that someone is going to show up at your door with a gun and enforce what the government wants. This is the perspective the left is trying to take with the 2nd Amendment. The Progressive statist turns the entire equation around and rather than limit government they limit the peoples freedom. I believe it is a mental illness to want to control what other people do. Then again I believe that progressives are mentally ill.
Great post.
To expand on this, compare the US Constitution and the Declaration of the Rights of Man. Beyond vague language in the latter, such as “common good” and a right of “safety”, that same document is loaded with caveats. Two of the most egregious:
Article X- No one may be disturbed for his opinions, even religious ones, provided that their manifestation does not trouble the public order established by the law.
Article XI- The free communication of thoughts and of opinions is one of the most precious rights of man: any citizen thus may speak, write, print freely, except to respond to the abuse of this liberty, in the cases determined by the law.
What are these exceptions, exactly? The Constitution has firm absolutist language which can only be altered by a deliberate misinterpretation. Under such a document, statism can only be based on lies. But with the DRM, statists can simply point and say, “See? It’s right there!”
There’s a reason one of these produced the best system of government in human history, and the other produced buckets full of severed heads and a military dictator.
Yep, in a country that couldn’t even win wars against, itself.
John, Paul, Steven. A devoted disciple, unto himself.
If he would like to change the Constitution, perhaps he run for competitive office and get his sorry-ass elected, rather than appointed.
Here’s another story in USA Today about Captain Fuckpants here. How the heck did he make it onto the Supreme Court? Seriously?
Not only does he want to repeal the 2nd, he wants to change/repeal 6 others of the Bill of Rights. What a piece of shit.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2014/04/21/justice-stevens-supreme-court-constitution-book/7872695/
I like this one:
•Requiring that congressional and state legislative districts be “compact and composed of contiguous territory” to stop both parties from carving out safe seats.
Think about it! Gerrymandering would be totally illegal! Control freaks like Dan Madigan and that idiot in North Carolina running for sheriff would be unable to control the votes!
The Judge has forgotten a very basic principal of our Constitution.
None of the Amendments GIVES us a right to do anything. ALL those Amendments PROTECT our rights.
He seems to have forgotten that the first ten amendments were put into the Constitution at the behest of several states to assure them that the new constitution would indeed protect the rights that are named in that Bill of Rights, without question, and without any lingering doubt on the part of the states.
They were not added to GIVE us anything. They were added to ASSURE US that our rights could never be abolished by the act of any human institution–especially any government.
The judge needs to give up his title.
And there you have the difference in understanding between a liberal and a conservative.
The liberals believe that all of our rights are given to us by the law and the lawmakers, and we have no rights apart from the law.
The conservatives believe that we have rights which are ours regardless of the law and the lawmakers, and we have those rights regardless of the law.
BTW, the images and the intro, “Here’s my graphic to convince you to repeal the 1st Amendment” are a scream. Puts a smile on my face.
Storyline now is that Stevens’ guest editorial set the gun grabbers back some years.