| Former Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens issued a modest proposal in The New York Times to get rid of the Second Amendment: Repeal it, he says.
Stevens was appointed by Republican President Gerald Ford, but he often sided with the more liberal wing of the court during his tenure and he resigned during the Obama administration, resulting in Elena Kagan being confirmed to take his spot on the bench.
Adam Winkler, a UCLA law professor and Second Amendment expert who supports gun control, was tweeting Tuesday about Stevens' piece, and said, "There's not a snowflake's chance in hell we are going to repeal the Second Amendment any time soon."
"We can't even get Congress to pass a law banning bump stocks," Winkler wrote. "We can't get Congress to mandate universal background checks. And Stevens thinks two-thirds of Congress will vote to repeal the 2A? And three-fourths of the states will ratify such an amendment? Nonsense."
Bet you can hear the slogan opponents would use against an effort like Stevens' proposal: They're trying to take your guns away!
In fact, that's a slogan President Donald Trump used effectively against Democratic opponent Hillary Clinton in 2016 (and since then), accusing her of wanting to "take your guns away" even though Clinton said she was a supporter of Second Amendment rights.
To say nothing of the very real procedural hurdles to a constitutional amendment. Constitutional convention? Supermajorities voting to repeal the Second Amendment in any legislative body in the United States? Don't hold your breath.
But Stephen Vladeck, a law professor at the University of Texas at Austin and a CNN contributor said maybe Stevens is just trying to reframe the debate a little bit.
Vladeck argued there is plenty of gun control legislation that can be achieved under the current structure and he pointed to a Maryland assault weapons case as proof.
"So we may not need either a different Supreme Court or a constitutional amendment to achieve most of what reformers are seeking; we just need folks to realize that the principal objections to many of these proposals are political, not constitutional," Vladeck said.
The Point: He has a point. Though the idea of repealing the Second Amendment may intrigue some, it will infuriate others. The bigger question is how do we interpret its intent for a modern-day, militia-free United States plagued by all-too-common mass casualty events due to gun violence? The Second Amendment is here to stay, but gun reform is a whole different story.
Read my full take here.
-- Z. Byron Wolf | 
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