Judge Merrick Garland, President Obama’s pick for Supreme Court Justice, is bad for guns and those who own and bear them. It’s that simple.
The death of Justice Antonin Scalia, a staunch defender of the U.S. Constitution, created a vacancy on the nation’s highest court and now the gun grabbers want to fill that vacancy with an anti-gunner.
Garland’s record is clear. He is against the precept that the Second Amendment to the Constitution is an individual right and he favors draconian gun registries — the types of registries that if left unchecked inevitably lead to gun confiscation.
What about “the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed” is hard to understand and support?
It doesn’t take a dissertation, nor a long list of nuances to figure this one out.
In 2007, Garland voted to undo a Circuit Court decision that struck down a District of Columbia ban on individual handgun possession. A three-judge panel struck down the ban, but Garland wanted the ruling to be reconsidered and to keep the ban in place.
Garland also voted to uphold an illegal gun registry in the Clinton years. Even though Congress explicitly forbade any permanent record keeping of gun purchases, then Attorney Gen. Janet Reno tried to retain NICS check records for six months for “auditing purposes.” Garland supported that move.
No need for a road map here. Garland doesn’t think citizens should own guns in the first place, and he’s backed government efforts to maintain records that make it easier for the government to confiscate guns later.
It is no surprise that Obama, an avowed gun-grabber, would pick a judge with these Second Amendment positions to sit on the Supreme Court. It’s all part of the president’s “commonsense gun safety” manifesto that chips away bit by bit at America’s right to keep and bear arms.
And legal scholars point out that it would be relatively easy to overturn the 2008 Heller decision that affirmed the individual right to keep arms. Just a single gun ban law could reach the Supreme Court again, and with an anti-gun majority, overturn Scalia’s landmark decision. Game, set, match.
The Republican-controlled Senate has indicated that it will not consider Garland’s nomination until after the Presidential election later this year. Pundits have pointed to such a concept as having originated with the Democrats — including current Vice President Joe Biden who helped coin the term “Borked.”
Let’s hope that this is not just another matter of politics as usual, because there is ample evidence in the Nation’s Capital that the politicians say one thing and then end up doing something else — often the opposite.
This matter is simply too important to be handled routinely at any level. To gun owners of all stripes — whether hunter, target shooter, competitor or concerned citizen — this one literally is for all the marbles.
It is shockingly chilling to realize that everything the Founding Fathers created could be destroyed by a single individual who could be afforded such power without the direct consent via the vote of the citizenry.
Ironically, another term for “garland” is “crown.” Yes, the president seems to have wanted to crown an anti-gunner. Coronations are antithetical to this country and its foundations.
But that is the reality of today in the United States. And that is why Garland cannot be confirmed.
