President Donald Trump "still fully supports the Second Amendment," despite retired Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens' call for it to be repealed, White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said Tuesday.
"We think that the focus has to remain on removing weapons from dangerous individuals, not on blocking all Americans from their Constitutional rights," Sanders said at the daily briefing.
Stevens, 97, a conservative who retired in 2010, called the amendment "a relic of the 18th Century" in an opinion column in The New York Times and Saturday's anti-gun violence "demonstrators should seek more effective and more lasting reform.
"They should demand a repeal of the Second Amendment," said Stevens, who was nominated in 1975 by President Gerald Ford.
Repealing the amendment also would undermine the National Rifle Association, which has a "propaganda weapon of immense power," he said.
"Overturning that decision via a constitutional amendment to get rid of the Second Amendment would be simple and would do more to weaken the NRA's ability to stymie legislative debate and block constructive gun control legislation than any available option."