Progressive Patrician Arrogance, or perhaps Cluelessness, and Blindness. John Paul Stevens and the Second Amendment.

John Paul Stevens is hardly the first person to suggest repealing the Second Amendment of the Untied States Constitution and he's not even the first person to opine as to that in the New York Times.  Heck, he's not even the first person named Stephens/Stevens to do so. Bret Stephens wrote an op-ed captioned that in the Times in 2017.  But Stevens very short editorial (it's so short, it's more in the nature of a typical letter to the editor) is different in that Stephens was a United States Supreme Court Justice.  And that should give us pause, but not for the reason that he likely things it should.  It should give us pause for this statement contained within it:

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 short article contains more than that.  Indeed a lot of the text is taken up by an argument that not until the Heller decision was any individual right recognized.  This is disturbing in and of itself as Stevens should be well aware that up until very recently very few Second Amendment cases made it up to the Supreme Court, indeed its still the case that that very, very few do, and that was because the Supreme Court avoided the amendment like the plague.  It likely did that as there is in fact no rational way to interpret it other than that it conveys an individual right.  Indeed, it very clearly restricted, originally, the United States government from passing legislation involving restrictions on the ownership of small arms and, like the rest of the Bill of Rights, there was no earthly way that it wasn't "incorporated" to similarly restrict states by the Fourteenth Amendment.  Indeed, the dirty little secret of interpretation of the Second Amendment is that its exceedingly easy to do and exceedingly easy to understand what it means.

Indeed Justice Steven's implicitly admits that by the text of the paragraph set out above.  While he goes on in his text about how no Court prior to Heller had held that governments couldn't restrict firearms ownership, he then admits that the very purpose of the Second Amendment, from the very onset, was to do just that.

And he's at least partially correct in his position. The framers of the Constitution, with very good reason, feared standing armies and feared that if there was one some future government would use it to destroy the independence of the states, and maybe democracy in the nation itself. There's small chance of that today, Stephens asserts, so there's no need for the Second Amendment.

Indeed, he's implying there's no chance of that today.

And that's where Patrician Stevens is massively incorrect.

There may well indeed be no or little chance of a future government or President using the Army to effect a coup.  Indeed, the closest we've come to a coup of any type was the Obergefell decision which was a species of judicial coup as it was not even close to being supported by the law.   Stevens had no role, as he was retired by that time, in that case, but that event provides the most notable example of a governmental entity seizing power in a significant way.  And that takes us to our next point.

Stevens assumes that we're past an age when the government is a threat to the states in any fashion, or by extension to the people. So he's comfortable with, and is in fact urging, that a right be surrendered as unneeded.  Don't worry, he's saying the government will protect you.

For what its' worth, the concept of keeping and bearing arms was not unique to the United States at the the time the Constitution was adopted.  It was in fact an English common law right, as long as you weren't Catholic. Catholics were deprived of that right, but then they were also deprived of the right to freely exercise their religion as well, and that takes us to the greater point.

Rights exist as they're rights.  Once a person feels that rights can be surrendered as the government will take care of them, they convert themselves into a ward of the state. This is the very thing that Jefferson predicted would happen to the American nation once it became largely urban, as he felt that urban people couldn't sustain a democracy as they were always wards of a nanny state that gave them things. And this in fact what occurred, during Jefferson's own lifetime, in France, which went from being a monarchy, to a republic, to a dictatorship with a "benevolent" dictator the French still admire in very short order.

If we can trust the government to protect us at all times (and more on that in a moment) and therefore we need no longer have any right to do so ourselves, then we should also be able to trust the government with information.

Does anyone?

That is, if a benevolent and loving government will protect our persons, wouldn't it always tell the truth?  So whatever a government says about another nation, it's leader, global warming, various dangers, the need for war or peace, well. . . you can trust them, right?

So there ought to be no need for freedom of speech or the press either.  Indeed, just think of how much more peaceful the world would be if I only had to get the "news" from the official government spokesman.

Would Stevens accept that?

Indeed, would he accept everything said by President Trump as truthful?  He should.  He trust the government to always do right and protect us.

By the same token, we surely should do away with the 4th Amendment protection from unreasonable search and seizures. A government that wants to protect us would never make an unreasonable seach, just reasonable ones, wouldn't it?

Indeed, why have trials by jury?  Or even really trials at all?  If the government, which we trusts so completely and fully with our welfare, is so benevolent at all times that we need always trust it, it's not going to accuse anyone falsely.  It's kind and protecting officers would never make a false accusation, or perhaps even simply an inaccurate one.

Rights exist for a reason and the moment you begin to compromise on one, you compromise on them all.  The examples to that effect are too plain to ignore. But perhaps to Stevens, with his very long career in the government, that's not plain.  Indeed, it's rarely the case that members of any one class or occupation feel themselves to be in the wrong as a group.

Trust us.  Nearly any body says that.

Or trust in yourself and keep your rights.  That may be the better, if more intellectually difficult, as then you have responsibility, option.