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Showdown looms over Sotomayor nomination, in Congress and in firearms community
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A showdown is looming over the nomination of Second Circuit Judge Sonia Sotomayor to a pending vacancy on the U.S. Supreme Court, and this showdown will not only be on Capitol Hill, but in the firearms community.
Gun rights organizations and activists are lining up firmly against Sotomayor for reasons I outlined here, with but one predictable exception. The American Hunters and Shooters Association – a group that appears to have been founded by Democrat party operatives as a mechanism to divide gun owners and provide an umbrella under which certain politicians can huddle while proclaiming they are supported by gun owners and sportsmen – has endorsed Sotomayor’s nomination, just as it endorsed Barack Obama early in 2008 during the presidential campaign season.
Gasp! What a shocking surprise…NOT!
While AHSA sees nothing wrong with the SCOTUS nominee, Sens. Orrin Hatch (R-UT), and John Cornyn (R-TX), two stalwart defenders of firearms rights, disagree.- Buckeye Firearms Association
This is the group that infamously barred the NRA’s news crew from its press conference during the 2007 NRA convention in St. Louis, MO, an incident I witnessed. I attended the media event, in which its president, Ray Schoenke, made it clear that a goal of his group is to drain members away from the NRA.
Schoenke is now insisting 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 partisan opinion does not stack up to that of former NRA presidents Sandra S. Froman and Robert Corbin, both from Arizona. They and 23 others signed a letter to the U.S. Senate, opposing the Sotomayor nomination, which I discussed here. Corbin is a former Arizona attorney general. Froman is an attorney in Tucson. Schoenke is a former football player. Guess whose advice I’m going to follow when it comes to Supreme Court nominees.
AHSA insisted that Barack Obama supports Second Amendment rights and that gun owners have nothing to fear. Is that the same Obama who made anti-gunner Rahm Emanuel his chief of staff? The same Obama who appointed anti-gunner Eric Holder as attorney general? The same Obama who named anti-gunner Hillary Rodham Clinton as secretary of state? The same Obama who told a Pittsburgh, PA newspaper that he opposes concealed carry by private citizens?
Corbin is a former Arizona attorney general. Froman is an attorney in Tucson. Schoenke is a former football player. Guess whose advice I’m going to follow when it comes to Supreme Court nominees.
And now, the same Barack Obama has nominated Judge Sotomayor to succeed the retiring Justice David Souter – who joined the minority argument in last year’s landmark Second Amendment case, holding that the amendment does not affirm and protect an individual right to keep and bear arms.
Hearings on Sotomayor’s nomination begin Monday. Senator Jeff Sessions (R-AL) is rumored to be preparing to grill Sotomayor about her Second Amendment views.
Sotomayor’s confirmation hearings could not be more perfectly timed. Sotomayor was part of a three-judge panel that earlier this year declared that the Second Amendment does not apply to the states; that is, it has not been incorporated to limit the ability of state and local government to restrict the right to keep and bear arms. There is a conflict between that position and a similar ruling from the Seventh Circuit on the Chicago handgun ban, and a Ninth Circuit ruling that declared the Second Amendment is incorporated through the 14th Amendment.
The historical record clearly shows that the Second Amendment was intended to apply to every American in every state in the country – Chris W. Cox, NRA chief lobbyist
The Chicago handgun ban case is being appealed to the Supreme Court. More than 30 state attorneys general have weighed in with an amicus brief, supporting the individual right concept as being incorporated to the states. If Sotomayor is confirmed, she would be put in a position to deliberate a constitutional question on which she has already negatively ruled.
If Judge Sotomayor’s credentials reflect the philosophy of Barack Obama, then it is no wonder why America’s firearms community has great apprehension about his presidency. - Seattle Gun Rights Examiner, May 27
If Sotomayor is confirmed, American gun owners should demand that she recuse herself from such deliberations, if the high court takes the Chicago case.
Meanwhile, the time may have come for gun owners to dismiss AHSA as a Trojan horse organization (the NRA and National Shooting Sports Foundation certainly have) whose sole aim is to undermine the gun rights movement and divide gun owners, pitting us against one another. If we are going to preserve firearms rights and restore the full force of the Second Amendment, gun owners need to all be on the same page.
As Abraham Lincoln sagely noted in 1858, a house divided against itself cannot stand.
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