Former Justice Stevens shooting for the moon with 2nd Amendment repeal call

So retired U.S. Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens is calling for a repeal of the 2nd Amendment.

Only 5,895 more policymakers have to agree.

But unlike Stevens, those 5,895 men and women need to have an actual vote in the matter, serving as legislators in federal and state government.

Stevens, who turns 98 in a few weeks, made his view known in an op-ed in the New York Times, arguing that schoolchildren and others calling for various gun control measures need to set their sights higher and demand a repeal of the 2nd Amendment, dubbing it “a relic of the 18th century.”

Of course, the means to repeal the amendment also dates back to the 18th century.

Repeal would require a new amendment. And the U.S. Constitution provides limited ways to do that. New amendments can be proposed by a two-thirds majority of both the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives or by a constitutional convention. Such a convention would need to be called for by two-thirds of the nation’s state legislatures.

Assuming the repeal effort took the first route — none of the amendments so far have come through a convention — the proposed amendment would need the support of 290 House members and 67 U.S. senators.

And that’s just for the repeal amendment to be proposed. To become part of the Constitution, the new amendment must be ratified by three-fourths of the state legislatures. That’s the general assemblies of 38 of the 50 states.

State legislatures — like the states themselves — are not created equal. But as of last year, the number of men and women serving as state legislators was 7,383, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.

So based on averages, across the nation some 5,538 of those legislators would need to vote to ratify the repeal in order to achieve the required three-fourths vote.

Adding those to the 67 U.S. senators and 290 House members needed brings the total number of legislators needed for a repeal to 5,895.

And what is the likelihood of finding that many votes to repeal the 2nd Amendment?

“Unlikely and nil,” is the probability range, says longtime political science professor John S. Jackson, of the Paul Simon Public Policy Institute at Southern Illinois University.

The U.S. House is “gerrymandered heavily in the Republican states toward the rural areas, and the Senate is constitutionally gerrymandered,” Jackson said, allowing lower population states and nonurban Americans to have a disproportionate vote.

“We have rule by an intense minority, and nobody’s going to change the Constitution on the distribution of two Senate seats to every state, and that is the most important” factor, Jackson said.

So Stevens’ call to repeal the 2nd Amendment?

“Thirty-eight states it takes to do that, and there is no way you can find 38 states that would agree with the justice,” Jackson said.