President Trump defended the Second Amendment on Wednesday after a former Supreme Court justice called for its repeal a day earlier.
“THE SECOND AMENDMENT WILL NEVER BE REPEALED!,” Trump tweeted. “As much as Democrats would like to see this happen, and despite the words yesterday of former Supreme Court Justice Stevens, NO WAY. We need more Republicans in 2018 and must ALWAYS hold the Supreme Court!”
THE SECOND AMENDMENT WILL NEVER BE REPEALED! As much as Democrats would like to see this happen, and despite the words yesterday of former Supreme Court Justice Stevens, NO WAY. We need more Republicans in 2018 and must ALWAYS hold the Supreme Court!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 28, 2018
In an op-ed for the New York Times, former Justice John Paul Stevens called on gun control activists to demand a repeal of the Second Amendment in the wake of protests across the nation aimed at pressuring lawmakers to act on stricter firearm regulations.
Stevens, who was nominated by Republican President Gerald Ford and went on to be part of the court’s liberal bloc until his retirement in 2010, argued that people pushing for gun control should demand a “more lasting reform” than banning semiautomatic weapons and increasing the minimum age to buy a firearm.
Amending the Constitution to repeal the Second Amendment would need to be proposed by either two-thirds of Congress, or two-thirds of states, and ratified by 38 states.
The White House pushed back on such a suggestion Tuesday.
“The president and the administration still fully support the Second Amendment,” White House press secretary Sarah Sanders told reporters. “We think that the focus has to remain on removing weapons from dangerous individuals, not on blocking all Americans from their constitutional rights.”
