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Posted on 02/22/2014 10:25:10 AM PST by mandaladon
Pro-gun advocates will likely be relieved that John Paul Stevens, 93, is now retired and no longer serving as a member of the Supreme Court. In his upcoming book, “Six Amendments: How and Why We Should Change the Constitution,” he argues for a slight change to the Second Amendment that would fundamentally alter its meaning.
As written by the Founding Fathers in the U.S. Constitution, the Second Amendment reads:
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. Stevens argues that the authors of the Second Amendment were mostly concerned about being oppressed by a national standing army, not so much about the right to self-defense.
So in order to reflect the changing times, he says, the Second Amendment should be altered to add five key words:
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.
“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,” Stevens writes in his defense of the change.
Stevens retired in 2010 after serving on the nation’s highest court for 35 years.
The odds of his crusade to transform the Second Amendment has little chance of even receiving serious consideration as Americans have rejected gun control efforts at the state and federal levels.
(Excerpt) Read more at theblaze.com ...
Bull****!
Stevens can blow it out his senile, old...!!!
I will fight for it to stay exactly as it is. No gun grabbing socialist/communist changes. Our guns protect us from the slimes who would have us on our knees.
Why not just change it to..... The right to bear arms shall be determined solely by the whims of whoever is in power and gun liberties can only be taken away and never given back.
When only the government and its agents can possess/use firearms, you have, by definition, a police state. The issue really is that simple.
I don’t care if the whole amendment is repealed.
I still have a God-given right to effectively defend myself against those more-numerous, more-powerful and less-principled than myself.
Every human being ever born had that right.
Those choking their lungs out in the showers of the Reich had that right; they just didn’t have the means to exercise it.
The better a country echoes God’s will, the better it will be blessed.
So yes it does matter. You might not care until you discover that God cares.
Tell that to the folks at the Battle of Wyoming...way back when...
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Good hay could be made out of a Stevens’ized amendment yet. Let’s sign everyone up for a militia... problem solved. Posse comitatus, maximus.
The greatest slaughters occur when guns are only in the hands of government.
Ultimately, that’s true.
The essence of my point, though, is that the right to defense is not granted, controlled and limited by the government.
While it’s preferable said right be formally recognized, the right exists even without that recognition.
A point which is lost on Justice Stevens.
Or willfully ignored.
It would clarify the amendment a lot more to remove everything to the left of the commas.
Not exactly. Now there would be an incentive for 2nd Amendment supporters to form militias! After all, “Joe-Bob’s Fundamentalist anti-demonRat Militia” does fit the definition of “a militia,” so members of the JBFadM would get to “keep and bear arms”!
So who here thinks the government would go for encouraging people to join militias? Anyone? Anyone?
And the Battle of Athens.
“Joe-Bob’s Fundamentalist anti-demonRat Militia”
That’s really scary.
Better it should be called “Joe-Bob’s Fuzzy Bunny Militia”.
Surely, nobody could object to that, right?
The language used on this gun grabbers dream makes absolutely no sense. Why would anyone include in the Bill of Rights an amendment that states the military has a right to bear arms. What government in the thousands of years of recorded history has disarmed its own military. I say military because that is what the liberals mean by militia. I would have more respect for this old coot if he just said that all civilians cannot posses arms, that would be more honest.
Communist sympathizers want to disarm the populace because they fear the same thing Yamamoto did...
Yamamoto, “I would never invade the United States, there would be a rifle behind every blade of grass”
That one I could get behind.
Only if the following language is also added: All non-incarcerated males over sixteen years of age, and all similarly qualified women who so choose, are automatically considered to be part of and serving in the unorganized but well regulated militia.
Well regulated means that the rules say you belong. Did I overlook anything?
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