BELLEVUE, WA – The founder of the Second Amendment Foundation today said that the nomination of Judge Merrick Garland to the U.S. Supreme Court by President Barack Obama should be rejected.
SAF Executive Vice President Alan M. Gottlieb, reacting to this morning’s announcement, was blunt: “This is not a good nomination and Judge Garland should not be confirmed.”
President Obama nominated Garland, who is the chief judge for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, to fill the seat left vacant by the untimely death of Justice Antonin Scalia, author of the landmark 2008 Second Amendment ruling in District of Columbia v. Heller. Scalia was considered a giant on the court and one of its finest conservative voices.
On the other hand, “Judge Garland voted to grant an en banc hearing to Heller after the three judge panel struck down the District of Columbia’s gun ban law. The only reason to do so would be to overturn the pro Second Amendment ruling. That was hostile to gun rights.”
Writing a few days ago in the National Review, Carrie Severino observed, “Garland has a long record, and, among other things, it leads to the conclusion that he would vote to reverse one of Justice Scalia’s most important opinions, D.C. vs. Heller, which affirmed that the Second Amendment confers an individual right to keep and bear arms.”
“Just as Second Amendment advocates have feared, President Obama is trying to change the court’s makeup to destroy the individual right to keep and bear arms,” Gottlieb stated. “This administration has done everything it can to erode the Second Amendment, and turn a right into a government-regulated privilege.
“Those of us on the front lines of the Second Amendment battle have warned for the past eight years that the right to keep and bear arms can live or die on a single vote,” he said, “and nothing makes that more clear than today’s nomination. I hope the Senate, if it takes up this nomination, promptly rejects it.”
The Second Amendment Foundation ( www.saf.org) is the nation’s oldest and largest tax-exempt education, research, publishing and legal action group focusing on the Constitutional right and heritage to privately own and possess firearms. Founded in 1974, The Foundation has grown to more than 650,000 members and supporters and conducts many programs designed to better inform the public about the consequences of gun control.
