Gun rights leaders oppose Sotomayor
by Dave Workman
Senior Editor
Some of the nation’s top gun rights leaders, including two past presidents of the National Rifle Association (NRA), have sent a letter to every member of the US senate, urging that the nomination of Judge Sonia Sotomayor to a spot on the Supreme Court be rejected.
“Judge Sotomayor’s record on the Second Amendment causes us grave concern about her treatment of this basic Constitutional guarantee permanently enshrined in the Bill of Rights,” the letter said.
It was signed by Tucson, AZ, attorney Sandra Froman, a past president of the NRA; Alan M. Gottlieb, chairman of the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms; Joseph Tartaro, president of the Second Amendment Foundation; Gene Hoffman, chairman of the CalGUNS Foundation; several current or former NRA directors; Robert Corbin, former Arizona attorney general and past NRA president; former Congressman Bob Barr; Jim Wallace, executive director of the Gun Owners’ Action League in Massachusetts; John T. Lee, president of the Pennsylvania Rifle and Pistol Association; Tom King, president of the New York State Rifle and Pistol Association; Robert E. Sanders, former assistant director of law enforcement for the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, and several others, 25 in all.
The letter was hand-delivered within days of an endorsement of Sotomayor’s nomination by the American Hunters and Shooters Association (AHSA). In a statement, AHSA President Ray Schoenke asserted, “As with most issues involving the Second Amendment, concerns about Sotomayor are being stoked by groups who benefit financially from the politics of fear.”
He added that, “Based on the available case history, it appears that Sotomayor honors precedent. Now that D.C. v Heller is precedent, gun-owners should feel secure that their rights are safe.”
Schoenke’s group was quick to endorse Barack Obama for president in early 2008.
However, it is not fear, but concern over the Second Amendment that the gun rights activists said compelled them to send their letter.
“The Supreme Court is almost certain to decide next year whether the Second Amendment applies to states and local governments as it does to the federal government,” they said in their letter. “While on the Second Circuit, Judge Sotomayor revealed her views on this issue when she joined an opinion, issued after Heller, holding that the Second Amendment does not apply to the states. Similarly in a 2004 case, she joined an opinion stating that the Second Amendment is not even a fundamental right. Imagine if such a view were held about other fundamental rights guaranteed by the Bill of Rights, such as the First, Fourth and Fifth Amendments.”
Gottlieb told Gun Week that, contrary to the AHSA’s position, Sotomayor’s record “clearly speaks for itself.”
“I signed the letter,” Gottlieb explained, “because our nation stands at point in history where we either defend all civil rights, or begin to surrender them one by one until none are left. It would be unconscionable to stand silently as the Senate deliberates confirmation of a new associate justice with such evident disregard for a key tenet, if not the critical element, of the Bill of Rights.”
In a late June opinion piece, Froman wrote about an opinion handed down earlier this year by a Second Circuit Court panel that included Sotomayor.
“In one paragraph,” Froman wrote, “she said the Second Amendment gives people no rights at all when it comes to state or city laws. She gave no explanation, and made no call for Supreme Court action.
“Then we find that this has been a consistent belief for Sotomayor,” Froman continued. “In a case before her in 2004, she and her colleagues concluded that there is no fundamental right in the Second Amendment but provided no substantive analysis to justify this conclusion. Throughout her career, Judge Sotomayor’s record is one of consistent opposition to the private ownership of firearms.”
The former NRA president recalled that when Obama ran for the presidency, he assured the country that he respected the Second Amendment. However, the Sotomayor nomination “belied his flowery rhetoric,” she said.
The letter from gun rights activists appears to have grown out of that column and its reception.
Even before she became NRA president, Froman vigorously warned gunowners that the most lasting legacy any president could leave would be the people he appoints to the Supreme Court and federal courts. She spent years spreading that message, and the Sotomayor nomination has apparently brought that effort into focus within the gun rights community.
Days before the letter was sent, Froman authored an opinion piece that has raced across the Internet, in which she blasted the Sotomayor nomination and urged gunowners to contact their senators and demand a “No” vote on her confirmation. She encouraged NRA members to be at the forefront of that effort.
“I served as an officer of the NRA for nine years,” she recalled, “including a two-year term as president. I saw NRA members turn the tide on Election Day 2000 to defeat Al Gore. We fought again to help defeat John Kerry in 2004. We can do the same with Sonia Sotomayor, if we call our US Senators and tell them to vote against this anti-gun judge. No fewer than fourteen Democrat senators have solid records on the Second Amendment, and we must urge them to oppose this nominee.”
The NRA took a slightly different approach in a July 7 letter to senators. The NRA said that it would actively oppose Sotomayor’s confirmation if she is hostile to senators who press her about gun rights.
The Washington Times said the letter marks a slight step forward for the group, which has still yet to say whether it flat-out opposes her confirmation or will count Judge Sotomayor’s Senate confirmation vote in its influential scorecard of lawmakers.
Meanwhile, the American Bar Association awarded Sotomayor its highest rating on July 7, continuing a string of endorsements from judicial and law enforcement groups.
And Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick J. Leahy (D-V T) and a group of national police officials released an analysis of Judge Sotomayor’s work on the appellate bench showing that she upheld criminal convictions in 92 percent of her rulings.
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