Mediaboss Marketing

This week, President Trump kept one of his most important campaign promises by nominating an originalist judge Neil Gorsuch to fill the Supreme Court vacancy left by Justice Antonin Scalias death last February. Scalia was the courts foremost practitioner of originalism and textualism, judicial philosophies that seek to resolve constitutional questions by reference to the language of the document, as publicly understood at the time of its enactment.

This approach led Scalia to author the historic opinion in District of Columbia v. Heller, which confirmed that the Second Amendment protects an individual right to keep and bear arms for defensive purposes.

Judge Gorsuchs embrace of originalism is a bulwark for our Second Amendment rights. When given the opportunity to consider the matter in his professional capacity, Judge Gorsuch has made clear that he understands the importance of the right to keep and bear arms.

In a case concerning a technical question of what the government must prove to establish a violation of the Gun Control Act, Judge Gorsuch noted that the Second Amendment protects an individual's right to own firearms and may not be infringed lightly. His statements in that case strongly indicate that he would hold the government to a high standard before allowing it to strip someone of the right to keep and bear arms.

Its hardly a secret that many in the federal judiciary have not shown the Second Amendment the respect it deserves. Justice Thomas, another originalist on the Supreme Court noted as much in 2015 when dissenting from the courts refusal to hear a Second Amendment challenge to a San Francisco ordinance requiring firearms in the home to be kept locked away or disabled with a trigger lock. Despite the clarity with which we described the Second Amendments core protection for the right of self-defense, Thomas wrote, lower courts, including the ones here, have failed to protect it.

Opposition to Judge Gorsuchs confirmation has already started amongst gun control supporters, and they are once again proving that dishonesty is no impediment in pursuing their agenda. Addressing Judge Gorsuchs nomination, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi claimed that Judge Gorsuch favors felons over gun safety. This claim was nothing more than a desperate attempt to smear the distinguished jurist, which is why it has already been found to be false by the fact-checking (and left-leaning) website Politifact.

Disappointed supporters of Hillary Clinton are wailing, gnashing their teeth, and vowing to obstruct Judge Gorsuchs confirmation. Their tactics, as usual, are heavy on hysteria and short on facts or reason.

Yet both sides understood that the 2016 presidential election was largely a referendum on the future direction of the U.S. Supreme Court. The American people spoke loudly and clearly in favor of respecting the original meaning of the Constitution. The Senate should therefore do its sworn duty and swiftly confirm Judge Gorsuch to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Read more from the original source:
Trump Supreme Court Nominee Neil M. Gorsuch Would Respect the Second Amendment - NRA ILA

Mark L. Hopkins | Special to the Daily News

A few months back I wrote a column titled, Guns dont kill people. Really? My column usually will draw between 30 and 40 responses each week, some positive and some negative. That column, however, kept me answering emails through much of the next week and beyond.

The Second Amendment reads, A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the People to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.

When the Guns dont kill people column was published, I heard from a number of NRA members. The NRA has often claimed that back in the late 18th century the men who are known as the framers of the U.S. Constitution and the Bill of Rights adopted the Second Amendment because they wanted an armed population that would have the weaponry at hand to take down the U.S. government should it become tyrannical. The actual history which preceded the Second Amendment says otherwise. It says, in fact, that the framers of the constitution wanted a strong federal government. To protect that government, they wanted a Second Amendment that would legally create and arm state citizen-based militias capable of stopping citizen rebellions and insurrections against state or federal governments. Though we can date the creation of the National Guard back to 1636 in Massachusetts, the Second Amendment was the first official reference to such militia at the federal level.

So, why did the framers of the Constitution believe they needed an armed militia? The key leaders of the United States at the time were wealthy members of what was in effect an American aristocracy, men like George Washington, James Madison, Thomas Jefferson, John Adams and Benjamin Franklin. Because of their own experience and knowledge of European countries, especially England and France, they clearly understood the need for an orderly, controlled and smooth-running society, not only for the general population but also to protect their own economic interests.

By the time the Second Amendment was passed the United States government had already experienced several citizen rebellions. Chief among these were Shays Rebellion in Massachusetts and the Whisky Rebellion in Pennsylvania. This was at a time when the federal government did not have an army. Without a military unit available to assert control they had no way to deal with such rebellions. In Boston, a wealthy group of merchants put together a militia to stop Shays rebellion. Two years later, when the Whisky Rebellion occurred in western Pennsylvania, President George Washington was alarmed enough that he put together his own militia, marched into Pennsylvania and arrested the perpetrators. In short, the countrys leadership had experienced citizen rebellions and wanted something with teeth to handle such problems in the future.

For those who believe that I am twisting the tail of the tiger by again broaching the sore subject of gun ownership and control, please view this effort as one of promoting discussion. I am not for removing guns from homes. Such would be as impossible as sending 11 million illegal aliens back to their home countries.

In subsequent columns I will lay out the foundational history that precipitated the creation of the gun clause in the Second Amendment. The next column will focus on President George Washingtons perspective on the rebellions and what he thought should be done about them.

Righting some wrongs is just not feasible. We have to make the best of our current situation. Our people have guns, more than 300 million of them, and most are not for going deer hunting on the weekend.

Dr. Mark L. Hopkins writes for More Content Now and Scripps Newspapers.

Read this article:
Mark L. Hopkins: More on guns and the Second Amendment - The Northwest Florida Daily News

Kansas Attorney General Derek Schmidt has asked congressional leaders to take action to protect Second Amendment rights of Social Security beneficiaries, according to a news release.

A group of 13 state attorneys general, including Schmidt, Wednesday urged congressional leaders to repeal an overreaching federal regulation that they said denies certain Social Security beneficiaries the right to keep and bear arms, according to the release.

In late December 2016, the Social Security Administration under then-President Obamas direction published a final rule that broadened a previously narrow prohibition for those adjudicated as a mental defective or who have been committed to a mental institution to include numerous individuals that Congress never intended to cover with this exclusion, such as program beneficiaries with representatives or alternate payees, according to the release.

This new rule allows the Social Security Administration to designate an individual a mental defective by its own discretion and relies heavily on overly broad definitions included in previous guidance from the U.S. Department of Justice, according to the release.

Read the original:
13 attorneys general seek Second Amendment protections | Local ... - Ottawaherald.com

Trumps nomination of federal judge Neil Gorsuch to the US Supreme Court has been greeted with much glee by conservatives and a well-anticipated gnashing of teeth by the progressive Left. Naturally, those of us in the gun community have our own particularized questions about what a Justice Gorsuch might mean for the Second Amendment. Lets take a look, shall we?

A look at Judge Gorsuchs generalized judicial philosophy is certainly encouraging. Given that it was Scalia who led the proSecond Amendment decisions in District of Columbia v. Heller and MacDonald v. Chicago, and that Gorsuch has been described not inaccurately as Scalia 2.0, we may reasonably hope that Gorsuch will bring a Scalia-like originalist and textualist approach to Second Amendment jurisprudence.

Judge Gorsuchs actual record on the Second Amendment is rather sparse, however. He has not been involved in first-principle cases such as Heller and MacDonald, so his decisions have nothing as explicitly affirming. It is worth asking, then, whether any of his decisions could suggest he would approach the Second Amendment in a negative manner.

Having spent decades fighting antiSecond Amendment legislation and jurisprudence, the gun community is sensitive to any suggestion, however slight, that a Supreme Court nominee might be predisposed against their views. The result is sometimes a tendency to object prematurely and cry wolf.

Some in the gun community seem to be leaning in this direction because of a case in Judge Gorsuchs recent past: U.S. v. Rodriguez, 739 F.3d 481 (10th Ct. App. 2013). In my view, however, this 30 opinion (which Gorsuch did not write, but in which he concurred) is entirely consistent with a robust reading of the Second Amendment. Rodriguez is perhaps best described as a Fourth Amendment case (right against unreasonable search) with Second Amendment overtones, much like the recent Robinson decision out of the Fourth Circuit.

In both cases, the police lawfully that is, with reasonable suspicion that a crime was being committed stopped an armed person and disarmed him during the stop for purposes of safety. In both cases the person stopped was found to be in unlawful possession of a gun and was ultimately arrested.

In Rodriguez, the Court of Appeals unanimously, with Judge Gorsuch concurring, found the police seizure of the stopped persons gun for purposes of safety to have been lawful under the Fourth Amendment, and not an infringement of the Second Amendment.

Some in the gun community have characterized Rodriguez and Robinson as holding that a person who exercises his Second Amendment rights is now required to sacrifice his Fourth Amendment right against unreasonable search. I disagree with that view. While we must always be vigilant against substantive infringement of our Second Amendment rights and we know that those intent on such infringement will never cease their attacks we also need to acknowledge that all constitutional rights are subject to reasonable limitation, particularly when that reasonable limitation is transient.

The Fourth Amendment, for example, does not protect us from all government searches it protects us from unreasonable government searches. Similarly, the Second Amendment does not provide an absolute right to keep and bear arms under any circumstance.

Most in the gun community, for example, would agree that violent felons and the mentally deranged should be denied the right to arms and that doing so does not infringe the Second Amendment. Even in the context of law-abiding gun owners, few would consider a prohibition against carrying a gun into the Oval Office when meeting with President Trump to be an infringement of the Second Amendment, so long as our right to be armed could be asserted immediately afterward.

The transient seizure of a gun in the course of a lawful police stopa seizure, that is, based on reasonable suspicion that a crime is underwayand under circumstances in which the police do not know whether the person stopped is armed lawfully is, in my view, not an infringement of the Second Amendment. Requiring the officer making a lawful stop to presume that the person stopped stopped on reasonable suspicion of criminal activity is law-abiding and is armed lawfully strikes me as unreasonable.

The rationale for such a transient taking the safety of the officer, his partners, the public, and even the person stopped is compelling and reasonable. Guns are, in fact, dangerous thats why those of us who concealed-carry them for personal protection do so in the first place: to make ourselves more dangerous to criminal predators.

As a strong Second Amendment advocate and someone who has concealed-carried a firearm for pretty much every day of my adult life (so, for most of the last 30 years), I find it difficult to get too worked up over a temporary seizure of my handgun during a lawful police stop so long as my gun is returned once the reasonable suspicion of criminal activity has been dispelled and the stop completed.

I, for one, welcome Judge Gorsuchs nomination to the Supreme Court, with great optimism for the Courts future Second Amendment jurisprudence.

Andrew F. Branca is an attorney and the author of The Law of Self Defense: The Indispensable Guide for the Armed Citizen.

See more here:
What Justice Gorsuch Might Mean for the Second Amendment - National Review

AmmoLand Shooting Sports News

NJ Republican Gubernatorial Candidate, Steven Rogers on the 2nd Amendment AmmoLand Shooting Sports News Steven Rogers ~ Within ten day of being elected governor of the State of New Jersey, I intend to propose a number of changes to New Jersey's firearms laws. NJ Republican Steven Rogers. USA -(AmmoLand.com)- The Second Amendment of the United ...

View post:
NJ Republican Gubernatorial Candidate, Steven Rogers on the 2nd Amendment - AmmoLand Shooting Sports News