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Former Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens called Tuesday for a repeal of the Second Amendment. It's an extreme position that no federal lawmaker has supported in the wake of the Parkland shooting, a tragedy that has galvanized a new generation of gun-control proponents.
The last time a member of Congress advocated this approach was in the early '90s when Rep. Major Owens, a six-term congressman from New York, introduced a resolution to repeal the Second Amendment. It's an effort that has gone largely unnoticed, and yet, as we’ve come to realize in the Trump era, history can rhyme and build on itself in fascinating and telling ways.
At the time, gun violence was the highest it’s been in the past 35 years. Owens knew his efforts at repeal would fail—he tried twice, first in 1992 and then again 1993—but he was undeterred. Although the issue has changed, his comments from the time are eerily resonant today. The calls for action from the Parkland students ring with a similar energy that Owens represented over two decades ago.
“The disgust with guns is growing every day," he said at the time.
Owens told the Chicago Tribune in 1993 that repealing the Second Amendment would eliminate the rationale that people should own guns because the Constitution says so.
"The repeal of the Second Amendment would not in itself outlaw guns—but it would set the stage for the legislatures to start getting rid of guns. It would give the philosophical signal that we are ready, as a nation, to stop the carnage," he said.
"What is going on today is not what the authors of the Constitution had in mind."
The carnage to which Owens referred was largely from an increase in drug violence in the early '90s. Owens pointed to such issues, but he was also concerned with the outdated nature of the Second Amendment.
"No one ever imagined that we would have gangs roaming the streets of our cities carrying guns," he said. "No one ever imagined we would have guns in our schools. What is going on today is not what the authors of the Constitution had in mind."
“If we were to repeal the 2nd Amendment, we would be saying: 'We do not want to promote this love affair with guns any longer," he added. "We do not want to perpetuate this fantasy that guns are part of our freedom.' Guns are not freedom. Guns take away our freedom from fear."
Owens, who worked at the Brooklyn Public Library and served as a community organizer for civil rights causes before his election to Congress in 1982, was widely known as a fierce liberal and champion of education. He also fought for greater representation in Congress, and authored the book, The Peacock Elite: A Case Study of the Congressional Black Caucus. He retired from Congress in 2006 and died in 2013.
Owens was a one-man team in his fight to repeal gun rights—"I'm all alone on this one," he told the Tribune—which might explain why his efforts have gone largely unnoticed in writing on the former congressman. He had a F-rating from the NRA; he voted "No" on measures that prohibited lawsuits against gun manufacturers and vendors and decreased wait periods for buying a firearm. In his obituary, the Times did not mention Owens’s fight to repeal the Second Amendment.
Both of Owens’s bills to repeal floundered in committee and failed to get co-sponsors, much less an actual vote on the floor. He openly admitted that his bills had no chance. But he wasn’t without hope.
“I honestly believe that if we were to repeal the Second Amendment, people would celebrate in the streets,” he said. It was simply a matter of time before the guns were done away with in this country. Five, ten years out—referencing the early aughts—a repeal could pass, he said.
In the wake of the #NeverAgain movement, Owens’s words resonate more than ever: “The disgust with guns is growing every day.”
