(AP Photo/Alex Brandon)
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Last Tuesday we looked at Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan's record on the Second Amendment, including answers to specific questions from the Senate committee reviewing her earlier nomination for Solicitor General.
Since then, The Wall Street Journal Law Blog has posted a presidential directive draft on banning importation of semiautomatic firearms that Kagan co-authored in 1997.
Citing a "potential threat to public health," the directive centered on "enforcing the statutory restrictions on importation of firearms that do not meet the sporting purposes test" as restricted by the Gun Control Act of 1968. The rationale was that weapons banned for import by the George H.W. Bush administration had been "modified...to remove certain military features without changing their essential operational mechanism."
That their stated public health purpose was contradicted by reality, and that a person was 11 times more likely to be beaten to death, went conveniently unsaid--they'd have had a tough time working in a fist ban, even if it would have made some of their constituent dependents "feel" safer. And that such modifications would not alter the way a semiautomatic firearm operates ought to be self evident—one round is fired per squeeze of the trigger, "shoulder thing[s] that go up" notwithstanding. As for the "sporting purposes test," our friends from Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership can tell you exactly where that evil originated.
So what does all this mean in terms of a coordinated opposition in the Senate to Kagan's confirmation? Probably not a thing. From the Associated Press:
Sen. Jon Kyl of Arizona, the Senate's Republican whip, said Sunday that he doesn't see the GOP employing a filibuster against Kagan, who was nominated for the high court by President Barack Obama.
"The filibuster should be relegated to the extreme circumstances, and I don't think Elena Kagan represents that," said Kyl, a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee.
As we've seen, the 1989 import ban came to us from a Republican administration. And Republican ranks have included the likes of Sarah Brady, Paul Helmke, Michael Bloomberg, Mark Kirk, Dan Coats...
Why would we expect Republican careerists in the Senate, who have taken an oath to "support and defend the Constitution" to view utter official disregard for the Second Amendment as "extreme"? After all, it says "shall not be infringed," but doesn't say anything about "eviscerated"...
Not that any of us should think the Obama administration would ever nominate anyone, if not sympathetic to, at least respectful of the right of the people to keep and bear arms...
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Speaking of respecting RKBA...
Check out Carl Bussjaeger's "New Hampshire Candidates Respond to Gun Rights Questionnaire."
We discussed some of that here.
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Two more videos from Conservative TVonline
We talked about the bulk of the Second Amendment March videos on Saturday and three more as a supplemental feature after yesterday's column.
Here are the last ones, Part 25, with March founder Skip Coryell wrapping things up, and Part 26, with singer Lucas Hogue performing "Take Our Country Back."
Click here to access the site, then scroll down and select the video you'd like to watch.
Comments
That's about what we've come to expect from Kyl. He voted against auditing the fed - he has his rich crony friends to protect - to hell with mere citizens.
The only way to get the attention of both parties is when the tea party grows and public outcry gets louder and louder as Americans find out how little they have to defend themselves with under the law. A health care plan most Americans do not want and Congress never read. Now the chance to lose second amendment rights under the same administration and what will come next when they have disarmed the citizens of this country? If you do not like Kagan for the next justice make sure your congressman knows it and do what you can to make it public on how many people oppose it. The worst thing for this administration is to have objections aired in a public forum because it gives everyone else a chance to see that they are not the only ones opposed to a lot of what this president and his puppet master (Pelosi) intend for citzens.
IF the citizens in this country who value their freedom would get off their lazy, apathetic arses and GET ACTIVE, ATTEND TEA PARTY RALLIES and come out in force - like those who support ILLEGAL ENTRANTS into this country did recently, we MIGHT could get their serious attention. But there are way too many Americans who are willing to sit by idly and let others do their patriotic duty for them. Even some of my previously most adored relatives are this way. They're "scared" to come out and protest or demonstrate. Well, the fact that they're "scared" is exactly why they SHOULD get out and join the dissent.
Personally, I hope I live long enough to see Obama, Peuuuulosi, Reid, Dodd, Frank, Bloom (spelling ? Blum), Sunstien, Lloyd and a few others in Congress and the gangster Obama Administration swinging in the wind for the crimes and treason they have perpetrated upon Americans and our liberties.
Read "Unintended Consequences" by John Ross. The guilty ones can be held accountable!
Frankly, I think the Repuckicans are simply unwilling to expend what little political capital they have remaining in a futile effort to oppose the appointment of Kagan. Why spend that capital when there's little chance the appointment can be defeated?
I've never met anyone truly committed to doing the right thing who gave a second's thought to "political capital" or any other excuse for ducking responsibility and duty.
The GOP is naught but empty holsters and electile dysfinction. I'd expect no less of them.
The simple fact is that having people like Sotomayor and Kagen seated on the Supreme Court became all but a done deal when Obama won. Elections have concequences. Obama won. We should all give a nice heartfelt round of thanks for all those gun owners who stayed home on election day, and an even bigger round for those gun owners who actually voted for him. May they all rot in hell.
Let's rephrase that slightly: having people like Sotomayor and Kagen seated on the Supreme Court became all but a done deal when McCain became the Republican nominee. Let's put credit where credit is really due.
Personally, I don't give much weight to the argument that Kagan wrote up a presidential directive banning guns under an existing sporting purposes test at the direction of an anti-gun president, who happened to be her boss. That doesn't prove she's anti-gun -- at worst, it proves she's a gun-agnostic.
Yet on the other hand, Sasha Volokh reports that Kagan was not only a friend of, but an officer of the gun club at Harvard! What are we to make of that?
So I agree with your premise that the GOP won't oppose Kagan over guns, because it's tough to get traction against her on that issue. What they should focus on is her paper trail described here:
patriotpost.us/alexander/2010/05/13/komrade-kagan/
Mr. Codrea, I'm a longtime reader, but this is my first comment.
I learn a lot from reading your work, and make it a daily stop. Lately, though, the question of whether or not I'll be able to load the Examiner webpage seems to rest entirely too much on luck. It won't stop determined readers like me--I'll keep trying 'til I get to the article, but I have stopped sending links to friends, because I'm tired of being asked why I keep sending links that don't work.
What I REALLY have to wonder about is how Examiner sells advertising. Why would ANYONE pay money for ad space on a platform that is just as likely to be down as up?
They've been doing site maintenance in preparation for a major revamping. It's been frustrating for those of us who write here, because we put a lot of effort into researching, writing and then promoting our work, and then when people can't access it, it makes it all for nothing. We've been complaining to management and hopefully it will be resolved soon. I'm going to forward your comment to my channel manager as a follow up to the strong complaint email I sent him this morning, and let him see we've got people who were willing to forward links but failure of the website to deliver has put the stop to that.
I'm glad you let me know.
The sad truth is David what’s new about this?
The GOP lied to gun owners in 1994 with their promise to repeal the Brady Bill then we find out the NRA supported the NICS in a back room deal with the GOP.
NEWT sold out gun owners by stopping any effort to reform government that’s why so many freshmen Republicans lost re-election and left the GOP.
David in Illinois the so-called pro-gun GOP supported a bill (HB5832) that calls for a mandatory 1-3 yrs in prison for gun owners without a valid FOID card.
Sick, sick, sick
The only real disputes between Republicans and Democrats are the means of obtaining and the subsequent division of the spoils.
None of you believe my previous comment, do you? Look at something. Abraham Lincoln, John F. Kennedy, Robert F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King,Jr., George Wallace.
These men only had one thing only in common, excepting they were all male, that applied to all of them at the time of their assassination or attempted assassination.
Give up?
They each had the political power to force change on the way government conducted its business and the stated intent of doing just that. Whether you agree with any or all of them or not, is not the point. The point is that the powers that be protected their access to the spoils of politcal tyranny by eliminating these men. Unless you believe in coincidence enough that statistically you run out of zeroes before you could accurately state the odds of such happening to all of them at the critical junctures of their political power. I do not.
I don't buy this. You may think the Kennedys had a plan to move America to greater freedom, but if so, why did the last brother turn out to be the biggest statist in America? Did his old man teach him the opposite of what he taught the other two?
MLK had CP members as advisors. And Lincoln -- Lincoln did more to destroy federalism and create the giant centralized state feared by Jefferson than any man before him and actually INCREASED the amount of power in the hands of the national power brokers.
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