I posted this originally on March 2, 2018, after the massacre at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida.
Justice John Paul Stevens wrote a series of essays about the Supreme Court and its treatment of important issues like gun control. The Washington Post excerpted one of them here, in 2014.
“Following the massacre of grammar-school children in Newtown, Conn., in December 2012, high-powered weapons have been used to kill innocent victims in more senseless public incidents. Those killings, however, are only a fragment of the total harm caused by the misuse of firearms. Each year, more than 30,000 people die in the United States in firearm-related incidents. Many of those deaths involve handguns.
“The adoption of rules that will lessen the number of those incidents should be a matter of primary concern to both federal and state legislators. Legislatures are in a far better position than judges to assess the wisdom of such rules and to evaluate the costs and benefits that rule changes can be expected to produce. It is those legislators, rather than federal judges, who should make the decisions that will determine what kinds of firearms should be available to private citizens, and when and how they may be used. Constitutional provisions that curtail the legislative power to govern in this area unquestionably do more harm than good.
“The first 10 amendments to the Constitution placed limits on the powers of the new federal government. Concern that a national standing army might pose a threat to the security of the separate states led to the adoption of the Second 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.”
“For more than 200 years following the adoption of that amendment, federal judges uniformly understood that the right protected by that text was limited in two ways: First, it applied only to keeping and bearing arms for military purposes, and second, while it limited the power of the federal government, it did not impose any limit whatsoever on the power of states or local governments to regulate the ownership or use of firearms. Thus, in United States v. Miller, decided in 1939, the court unanimously held that Congress could prohibit the possession of a sawed-off shotgun because that sort of weapon had no reasonable relation to the preservation or efficiency of a “well regulated Militia.”
“When I joined the court in 1975, that holding was generally understood as limiting the scope of the Second Amendment to uses of arms that were related to military activities. During the years when Warren Burger was chief justice, from 1969 to 1986, no judge or justice expressed any doubt about the limited coverage of the amendment, and I cannot recall any judge suggesting that the amendment might place any limit on state authority to do anything.
“Organizations such as the National Rifle Association disagreed with that position and mounted a vigorous campaign claiming that federal regulation of the use of firearms severely curtailed Americans’ Second Amendment rights. Five years after his retirement, during a 1991 appearance on “The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour,” Burger himself remarked that the Second Amendment “has been the subject of one of the greatest pieces of fraud, I repeat the word ‘fraud,’ on the American public by special interest groups that I have ever seen in my lifetime.”
Got that? The conservative Chief Justice Warren Burger, appointed by President Richard Nixon, said that the NRA had perpetrated a fraud on the American people by twisting the words of the Second Amendment to deregulate military weapons and put then in the hands of civilians.
Justice Stevens added:
”In response to the massacre of grammar-school students at Sandy Hook Elementary School, some legislators have advocated stringent controls on the sale of assault weapons and more complete background checks on purchasers of firearms. It is important to note that nothing in either the Heller or the McDonald opinion poses any obstacle to the adoption of such preventive measures.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
These repeated massacres represent a code red national emergency. Alarm bells are clanging, red lights are flashing danger, danger, danger! If we lived in a sane society, actions would be taken immediately. But we have a GOP controlled senate and White House that stand in the way of any sensible gun laws. This is hideous, horrific and disgusting. Even if a million Americans took to the streets in protest over the inaction in the face of the never ending bloodshed, the GOP would stonewall and obfuscate any attempts at enacting tougher gun laws.
America has a “MENTAL HEATH CRISIS” and it’s getting worse.
Something about the 24/7 news cycle is making people crazy, destroying privacy and boundaries.
No America has a Gun problem . Unless there is something in the American water supply or child rearing that creates more mentally ill people with guns willing to use them. Than other First World Nations.
Agree with you here 100%.
As I have written here before, an essential part of change must be an accurate teaching of reasons for and subsequent history and distortion of the second amendment. The purpose of it was to provide a means of protecting a young nation. Period. Second amendment fetishists have no understanding whatsoever of its history and purpose and we continue to pay the price every hour of every day. The post today about how other countries regulate guns more closely fits the founders’ vision than the daily news in this nation.
Actually that is not quite true. The purpose was to preserve the Slave States rights to maintain militias to put down rebellions,if needed.
There was no problem having a standing Navy right in the body of the Constitution. A standing Army was not disputed. It was to be a militia a citizen Army. Article 1 section 8. And it allowed for calling up armies for up to 2 years. The Amendment was to Madison’s call a Federally regulated Militia. Amended to grant that right to the States.
Actually, that is not true at all. The threat to the new nation in the late 18th/early 19th centuries was not from slave insurrection, it was from the British Empire. This was proven from the tariff fight that eventually drove Jefferson from office (and kept the nation out of war) and the War of 1812. Slave insurrections never posed a threat to the existence of the nation. This myth has been promoted by revisionist historians with an agenda, but has no basis in fact whatsoever. The most prominent example of this is Nat Turner’s rebellion, which created a small regional response, but had no impact on the United States as a whole. Please read any history of the War of 1812, especially that by Henry Adams, to understand what the constitutional intent of militias was and why that theory failed in practice. Slavery, however heinous and wrong it was, was not ever an issue that could bring down the Union until the Civil War, when the Union victory led to the unfulfilled promise of the 13th, 14th and 15th amendments.
GregB
Except the time line is off Greg, The Bill of Rights was ratified in 1791. Before any subsequent events. We are not disputing the need for a National Defense .
As Stevens referenced
“Concern that a national standing army might pose a threat to the security of the separate states led to the adoption of the Second Amendment ”
What security was there that separated the concerns of Nation from those of Individual States. Concerns that control of that Militia would be pertinent to.
So for that we go to the founders and there original debate:
Patric Henry “If the country be invaded, a state may go to war, but cannot suppress [slave] insurrections [under this new Constitution]. If there should happen an insurrection of slaves, the country cannot be said to be invaded. They cannot, therefore, suppress it without the interposition of Congress. . . . Congress, and Congress only [under this new Constitution], can call forth the militia.”
Pretty obvious there.
And
“In this state,” (he said,) “there are two hundred and thirty-six thousand blacks, and there are many in several other states. But there are few or none in the Northern States. . . . May Congress not say, that every black man must fight? Did we not see a little of this last war? We were not so hard pushed as to make emancipation general; but acts of Assembly passed that every slave who would go to the army should be free.”
And
“In this situation,” Henry said to Madison, “I see a great deal of the property of the people of Virginia in jeopardy, and their peace and tranquility gone.”
Nothing revisionist there. Henry is joined by Mason and others.
I will argue that the Issue of Slavery posed an even greater threat to the new Nation than that of a foriegn invasion. A raging division that a few generations later cost the lives of over 600,000 Americans.
We have a standing army. What would the Founders think of that?
Edit: the Nation ,
their original
Joel, I apologize for my angry answer. I was pissed off and I shouldn’t have take it out on you. I understand and agree with your points. My point, and we may disagree on this, is that the great threat to the young American nation came from Great Britain, not slave revolts. But I agree with you that southerners feared those possible revolts and did use the fear of Great Britain to bolster their interests and fears. No issues as large as this are simple or easily defined by black/white extremes.