The February 14 shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida left 17 people dead, but it energized many of the surviving students to fight for gun control. They’ve spun their grief and anger into a national movement and have garnered widespread support, organized massive school walkouts and the massive, nationwide March for Our Lives protest last month. They’re not partisan in any way, but they are pro–gun control and their biggest message is to urge people to vote for politicians who are also pro–gun control.
Not everyone at Stoneman Douglas agrees with them, though. Kyle Kashuv, who also survived the shooting, opposes gun control and has become a pro–Second Amendment advocate since the shooting. Kashuv recently met with conservative Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, who told him that the Second Amendment is safe and “won’t be touched.” The two also spoke about some of the cases that Thomas has dissented on.
An honor discussing #2A and the Constitution with Justice Clarence Thomas. He told me about some of the cases he dissented on and how #2A won't be touched. pic.twitter.com/8Eyx7YE0zT
The topic of repealing the Second Amendment isn’t exactly a priority for the Parkland students or their movement, but it did become the topic of recent heated debate when John Paul Stevens, a former liberal U.S. Supreme Court Justice, whose time on the bench was the third-longest ever, penned a New York Times op-ed urging advocate to push for a repeal of the Second Amendment. He argued repealing it would actually bring them closer to their gun reform goals than anything else.
It’s fair to assume that actually implementing such a repeal would certainly be way more complicated than it sounds. For what it's worth, President Donald Trump once tweeted that the Second Amendment would "NEVER BE REPEALED." It’s definitely not something a pro–Second Amendment justice like Thomas would support: just days after the Parkland shooting, the Supreme Court refused to hear a case that would challenge California’s 10-day waiting period for firearm purchases. Thomas was annoyed enough to write a 14-page dissent in which he wrote: “As evidenced by our continued inaction in this area, the Second Amendment is a disfavored right in this court.”
In the meantime, the Parkland students are still facing near-constantbullying by disgusting right-wing and conservative adults, which probably says more about where we are in the gun control debate and as a country than the Second Amendment.
