The push and pull over the Second Amendment right to bear arms is heating up again, thanks in part to former Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens’ new book, says USA Today. On Friday, the high court will consider whether to hear a challenge to a New Jersey law restricting the right to carry guns in public. If the court grants the petition, it would be the most important gun control case since the justices upheld the right to keep handguns at home for self-defense in 2008.
While the justices ponder what the Constitution’s framers meant with the words “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,” former Justice Stevens suggests it be rewritten. In his new book, Six Amendments: How and Why We Should Change the Constitution, Stevens, 93, advocates adding the words “when serving in the militia” to reduce the number of firearms-related deaths — roughly 88 per day — that occur in the USA.