newyorker | Stevens’s dissent should be read in full, but his conclusion in particular is clear and ringing:
The right the Court announces [in Heller] was not “enshrined” in the Second Amendment by the Framers; it is the product of today’s law-changing decision. . . . Until today, it has been understood that legislatures may regulate the civilian use and misuse of firearms so long as they do not interfere with the preservation of a well-regulated militia. The Court’s announcement of a new constitutional right to own and use firearms for private purposes upsets that settled understanding . . .
Justice Stevens and his colleagues were not saying, a mere seven years ago, that the gun-control legislation in dispute in Heller alone was constitutional within the confines of the Second Amendment. They were asserting that essentially every kind of legislation
concerning guns in the hands of individuals was compatible with the
Second Amendment—indeed, that regulating guns in individual hands was
one of the purposes for which the amendment was offered.
So
there is no need to amend the Constitution, or to alter the historical
understanding of what the Second Amendment meant. No new reasoning or
tortured rereading is needed to reconcile the Constitution with common
sense. All that is necessary for sanity to rule again, on the question
of guns, is to restore the amendment to its commonly understood meaning
as it was articulated by this wise Republican judge a scant few years
ago. And all you need for that is one saner and, in the true sense,
conservative Supreme Court vote. One Presidential election could make
that happen.
