“Each year over 30,000 people die in the United States in firearm-related incidents. Many of those deaths involve handguns. The adoption of rules that will lessen the number of those incidents should be a matter of primary concern to both federal and state legislators.”

— Justice John Paul Stevens in his book, “Six Amendments: How and Why We Should Change the Constitution.” Chapter VI includes Justice Stevens' interpretation of the original meaning of the Second Amendment: “Concern that a national standing army might pose a threat to the security of the separate states.” He adds that for more than 200 years, “federal judges uniformly understood that the right protected by the text was lmited in two ways: first, it applied only to keeping and bearing arms for military purposes, and second, while it limited the power of the federal government, it did not pose any limit whatsoever on the power of states or local governments to regulate the ownership or use of firearms.”