The National Rifle Association has done it again. Just as the gun lobby opposed the Supreme Court nomination of Justice Sotomayor and said it would "score the vote," yesterday, in a letter by NRA executives Wayne LaPierre and Chris Cox, the gun lobby stated its opposition to the nomination of Elena Kagan. It added the ominous assurance that "this vote will be considered in NRA's future candidate evaluations."
We know how this story will end. Justice Sotomayor was easily confirmed, with multiple Senators with previous "A" ratings from the NRA voting for her, from Montana Senators Baucus and Tester, to Senator Graham of South Carolina, to Senators Warner and Webb of Virginia. Nominee Kagan similarly will be confirmed, again with a host of NRA-supported Senators willing to cross the gun lobby to do what is good for the country. Perhaps some of them are starting to enjoy turning their backs on NRA extremism. Maybe they will do it more often.
The NRA accuses Kagan of a "clear hostility" to the Second Amendment, but for LaPierre and Cox that means she understands that our Constitution leaves ample room for reasonable gun restrictions that can save countless lives. In part, the NRA's letter is a temper tantrum reflecting the frustration of its leadership at the language the Supreme Court has included in its two landmark "gun rights" rulings in Heller and McDonald, implicitly rejecting an absolutist reading of the Second Amendment.
In both cases, the Court has given nodding approval to the continued constitutionality of a broad range of gun regulations limiting who can have guns, the conditions under which they can have them, what kinds of guns they can have, and where they can take them. The NRA, understandably, has said it fears nothing but a "practical defeat" may come of this week's ruling in McDonald v. City of Chicago applying the Second Amendment to states and localities.
The Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence endorsed the Kagan nomination, in part because she was an active participant in designing and implementing the policies of the Clinton administration to curb gun crime and violence. She appeared to play a particularly important role in President Clinton's action to strengthen the ban -- first instituted by the George H.W. Bush administration -- on the importation of semi-automatic assault rifles. Her role in such matters, of course, drives the NRA crazy, because Kagan was part of an administration that was quite willing to stand up to the bullying tactics of the gun lobby to protect our citizens from gunfire. A refreshing thought, indeed.
For me, Kagan's most revealing testimony about the Second Amendment was her exchange with Senator Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) about her 1987 recommendation to Justice Marshall, when she was his law clerk, against granting certiorari in a case seeking review of a lower court ruling upholding the District of Columbia handgun ban. She told Marshall she was "not sympathetic" to the Second Amendment claim in that case.
When Grassley asked her why she was "not sympathetic," she responded that at the time:
20 years before Heller, the state of the law was very different. No court, not the Supreme Court and no appellate court had held that the Second Amendment protected individual rights and, indeed, none of the justices on the court at that time voted to take certiorari in that case.
She continued:
it had long been thought, starting from the Miller case [in 1939], that the Second Amendment did not protect such a right and... now the Heller decision had marked a very fundamental moment in the Court's jurisprudence with respect to the Second Amendment.
And thus Kagan made it clear that the Roberts Court, in its Heller ruling, had defied Supreme Court precedent (the 70-year-old Miller decision) -- a hallmark of judicial activism. Kagan recognized in her testimony that Heller "is the law" and "is entitled to all the precedent that any decision is entitled to... " No doubt the irony has not escaped her that Heller "is the law" only because it showed no respect whatsoever for established precedent.
The Heller and McDonald decisions both defied precedent (to say nothing of the plain text of the Second Amendment) in fashioning a new right to be armed in the home for self-defense. Fortunately, and paradoxically, both rulings establish the foundation for the continued constitutionality of gun control laws that will make it harder for dangerous people to get guns, while still allowing gun ownership by law-abiding and responsible adults.
Everything we know about Kagan suggests she will help to build on that foundation as a member of the Supreme Court. Nothing about her suggests she will be a friend to the gun lobby's Second Amendment extremism.
For more information, see Dennis Henigan's Lethal Logic: Exploding the Myths that Paralyze American Gun Policy (Potomac Books 2009)
52 "Put your sword back in its place," Jesus said to him, "for all who draw the sword will die by the sword. 53 Do you think I cannot call on my Father, and he will at once put at my disposal more than twelve legions of angels?"
A good example was the Brady Campaign's attempt to torpedo Justice Alito's nomination by dubbing him "the machine gun judge." The basis for this characterization was a Commerce Clause ruling he had made years prior, and which had been essentially undercut by later developments in Commerce Clause jurisprudence. Calling Justice Alito "the machine gun judge" was literally about as accurate as calling Justice O'Connor "the marijuana judge" because she dissented on basically the same Commerce Clause grounds in Gonzalez v. Raich.
Just to prove that he isn't going to be rising above anything, Mr. Henigan starts by critizing the NRA for taking a position on Kagan, and then goes on to take a position on Kagan. The more things change . . .
Hello?
It is dangerous to politicize the appointment process to this level. Gun control is a legislative question, not a judicial one, and the risk is that guns will join abortion as one of the topics that a judge must be very careful around for fear of a future nomination being jeopardized. A judge should be free to rule "for" or "against" guns based on what the facts of a specific case counsel, without having to worry about being unfairly characterized by someone in the future based solely on the (perceived) result in the case.
Here we see your dear leader say:
1. Toy guns are regulated more than real guns.
2. The Brady Campaign does not try to regulate guns.
3. Gun manufacturers are now making real guns with orange tipped barrels to make them look like toys.
Your organization has zero credibility.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a6u8VO_ngJk&feature=PlayList&p=F66C19597B44A1C3&playnext_from=PL&playnext=1&index=22
Criminals painting orange tips on real guns to try confusing the police
I haven't verified this nor have I determined how frequent it is:
a considerable amount of the criminal element are now painting the tips of their ‘Real Weapons’ with an orange tip. It’s easy to understand their reasoning. Once again, Law Enforcement find themselves in a deeper hole. Ironically, if this criminal who has no criminal record and is allowed to own this weapon in the first place, there is no law preventing him from painting the tip of his real gun orange in the attempt to make it appear as a toy. . . .
posted by John Lott at 7:10 PM
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o1cYzATHcqA
Ideologies shape the times--Peace or War
http://home.nra.org/#/home
Unless he is offering to resign if the nomination goes through?
So you do care. Very interesting.
- - - - Clarence Darrow
But, its time for my fellow progressives/liberals/Democrats to admit that we will never live in an unarmed society. We will not change this with logical arguements or name calling. No number of tragic stories of people dying unnecessarily or tragically because of guns will sway those that have a need to own a fire arm.
Likewise, its time for those that value gun ownership as a Constitutional guarantee to realize that there is not a chance in hell anyone is going to take away all your guns. So relax, take a breath and realize people like me are not evil or stupid or less American than you and at the end of the day you'll still be armed and as long as there is a Second Amendment worded in the way that it is - you always will be.
5-4 for the Second Amendment...Can you imagine a 5-4 vote on the fundamental tenets of the 1st Amendment?
July 4th Test: We Won Our Independence From Whom ?
Quote:
According to a new Marist Poll, 26 percent of Americans are either unsure, or chose the wrong country when they were asked which country the United State won its independence from.
Quote:
Nearly 1/3 of all Southerners didn't know the United States won independence from the British. The Midwest was second worst with over 1/4 of residents in that part of the country not knowing who America beat to secure its independence.
http://cbs4.com/watercooler/independence.england.america.2.1785445.html
Maybe the question was too hard, that's all.
Turukano replied on Jul 03, 2010 at 22:49:35
“Didnt a large portion of those folks think we won Independence from China? :-)â€
“Germans who wish to use firearms should join the SS or the SA - ordinary citizens don't need guns, as their having guns doesn't serve the Stateâ€
Heinrich Himmler quotes (German one of the most powerful men in Nazi Germany. 1900-1945)
Unless you were Jewish.
Hope you had time to read up about that triple murder in Keenesaw.
I see you also forgot about the murder suicide in 2007.
And people get carded in the grocery all the time when they are buying beer.
I know: you want special rights. Firearms are different. Do the background check after the show is over and everyone goes home.
Will criminals get around these laws? Of course. Like all criminals they figure out ways around while law abiding people have to wait for laws to change. It sucks. That is why we will be debating this issue forever.
False. A common strawman employed by gun controllers in an appeal to emotion.
Certainly, they got that impression when the NRA fought background checks.
"The NRA, understandably, has said it fears nothing but a "practical defeat" may come of this week's ruling in McDonald v. City of Chicago applying the Second Amendment to states and localities."
But no one in the NRA actually said any such thing. He is the actual quote:
"The NRA will work to ensure this constitutional victory is not transformed into a practical defeat by activist judges, defiant city councils, or cynical politicians who seek to pervert, reverse, or nullify the Supreme Court's McDonald decision through Byzantine labyrinths of restrictions and regulations that render the Second Amendment inaccessible, unaffordable, or otherwise impossible to experience in a practical, reasonable way."
In other words, the NRA doesn't think the McDonald ruling is a "practical defeat". They have only vowed to prevent it from being perverted into a practical defeat by rouge city councils, judges, and politicians. The SCOTUS ruling itself is not be a practical defeat. Only attempts to defy it by the above listed groups would make it so.