John Paul Stevens: Repeal the Second Amendment

Former (fortunately) Supreme Court Justice Stevens wants to repeal the Second Amendment. The chances of this happening are slim, to say the least. Two thirds of the House *AND* the Senate would need to ratify an amendment; then three-fourths of the *states* would need to buy off on it. This would seem to be an unreachable goal for the purposes of reducing civil liberties, but it’s never a great idea to tempt fate. Who knows what hijinks might be afoot to help push such an idea forward. Still, it would be interesting and constructive to see just such an effort hit the House and Senate, to see who would actually vote in favor of such a thing.

There are forever people yammering on about a new civil war (which would be just about the worst thing imaginable… an actual American civil war would probably result in the US losing Alaska to the Russians, Hawaii and the west coast to the Chinese, the south west to the Mexicans, and the battered remains forever impoverished and reduced to the status of just another failed state, at the whim of greater powers who don’t now and never did give a rats ass about the high falutin’ ideals that the Americans were up in arms over). And while for the most part I think the great majority of these people are just bloviating, if somehow the Second Amendment was repealed – or the First, for that matter – my estimation of the chances of an actual civil war would go up *substantially.*

Consequently: anyone voting to repeal the Second would be essentially voting to initiate another civil war. They’d be voting to destroy the United States. They’d be voting to end the great experiment in democracy and freedom. With Europe soon to fall into a new dark age, Russia turning inward and dumb, China becoming a giant national socialist nightmare… anyone voting to repeal the Second would be voting to end western civilization, to preclude western values from making it to Mars and beyond, to turn the dream of the future over to monsters.  If history remembers anything, it would remember these Senators and Congressmen alongside Vidkun Quisling, Ephialtes, Klaus Fuchs and Benedict Arnold.