by Dave Workman
Senior Editor

The echoes had hardly faded in the wake of John Ashcroft’s announced retirement as attorney general, and President George Bush’s nomination of White House counsel and former Texas Supreme Court Justice Alberto Gonzales to replace him before gun rights activists were heating up the Internet over concerns about the nominee’s position on the Second Amendment.

Following the resignations of Ashcroft and Commerce Secretary Donald Evans the week after the elections, Secretary of State Colin Powell and three other Cabinet members submitted their resignations on Nov. 15 as President Bush’s cabinet is restructured for his second term team.

Besides Powell, others whose resignations were confirmed included Agriculture Secretary Ann Veneman, Education Secretary Rod Paige and Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham.

Bush has been quick to nominate new appointees, and one of the first was National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice to replace Powell as the nation’s top diplomat. While there has been little comment on Rice’s appointment among gunowners as this issue of Gun Week went to press, her appointment at state is of major importance to the gun rights movement because of the global gun control protocol being considered at the United Nations.

Ashcroft scored points for himself, and the Bush Administration, early in his tenure at the Justice Department when he advised all federal prosecutors in November 2001 that the Second Amendment “protects the gun ownership rights of individuals.” This was just two months after the 9/11 terrorist attack, when anti-gunners were trying to capitalize on the public outrage to push a gun control agenda, insisting that it would thwart terrorist attempts to obtain guns.

Ashcroft’s directive sent a shock wave through the gun control community, which has long insisted that the Second Amendment protects only a so-called collective right of the states to organize militias and National Guard units. Most constitutional scholars agree that the Amendment refers to an individual right.

Of concern to firearms rights activists was a notation by The Washington Post on Nov. 11 that Gonzales had “felt blindsided when Ashcroft, early in the Administration, announced that the department would embrace, for the first time ever in (recent) memory, a view of the Second Amendment that regards gun possession as an individual right on a par with freedom of speech or religion.”

Responding to that concern, Joe Waldron, executive director of the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms, weighed in on one chat board, noting that “It is my understanding that the issue was not the Second Amendment per se, but the fact that Ashcroft had not coordinated his statement with the White House.”

If that was the case, Ashcroft’s memorandum to federal attorneys would not be the first instance in which a cabinet officer spoke on a subject without first clearing his or her remarks with the White House.

It is not that gunowners think Gonzales will reverse the Ashcroft doctrine. After all, Gonzales has been a close friend and ally of the President since Bush was governor of Texas. Bush won that seat in large part by campaigning on a promise to sign concealed carry legislation that had been vetoed by his predecessor, anti-gun Democrat Gov. Ann Richards. Many suggest that it was the veto that cost Richards the governorship.

So far, Gonzales has made no public pronouncements on what he might do as attorney general.

That hasn’t stopped gun rights activists from guessing. Some believe he is “a move left” by Bush in terms of legal philosophy. Others suggest he is a “strict Constitutionalist” who deserves the benefit of the doubt.

One of the more humorous observations was from one man who observed that “he is not Rudy,” a reference to former New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, who is widely known to be a supporter of restrictive gun control laws. Before Gonzales was nominated, the Capitol Hill rumor mill had been buzzing with conjecture that Giuliani would be nominated to the cabinet post, because he is a former federal prosecutor in New York City who earned a reputation for being tough on crime.

Gunowner sentiment about Ashcroft has been divided. While it is true that Ashcroft did reverse years of liberal gun rights interpretation in the Justice Department, it is also true that he sought the broadest interpretation of existing federal gun laws. Under Ashcroft, the Justice Department continued the prosecution of Texan Timothy Joe Emerson, whose case became a cause célébre for gun activists. It was the Emerson case that brought a ruling from the US 5th Circuit Court of Appeals that included dicta observations from the majority ruling that the Second Amendment protects an individual right.

However, Emerson ultimately lost his case on other grounds and was convicted.

Under Ashcroft’s leadership, the Justice Department also maintained that all existing federal gun laws are constitutional.

Ashcroft also eliminated long-term retention of record checks under the National Instant Check System (NICS), and fought to prevent those records from being used for any other purpose than to clear firearms transactions, as originally intended by the 1993 Brady Law. Some anti-gun lawmakers wanted to usurp the NICS data under the rationale that it would be used to help identify foreign terrorists who tried to legally buy guns.

Many gunowners were also concerned about Ashcroft’s push for renewal of the Patriot Act.

In nominating Condoleezza Rice to head the State Department, President Bush said Tuesday that her early years in segregated Alabama helped shape her world view.

In announcing her selection, Bush said of Rice: “As a girl in the segregated South, Dr. Rice saw the promise of America violated by racial discrimination and by the violence that comes from hate.”

Rice has “an abiding belief in the value and power of liberty because she has seen freedom denied and freedom reborn,” Bush said.

According to The Montgomery Advertiser, Rice, 50, was raised in Birmingham, AL, by parents who believed strongly in religion and achievement through education.

During the racially motivated bombings of the summer of 1963, her father and other neighborhood men guarded the streets at night to keep white vigilantes at bay. Rice said her staunch defense of gun rights comes from those days, the newspaper said. She has argued that if the guns her father and neighbors carried had been registered, they could have been confiscated by the authorities, leaving the black community defenseless.

A pro-gun secretary of state will be an important member of the Bush cabinet as the Administration deals with the global gun control agenda.