The tweets were pre-written, properly loaded, and ready to spit out like .50 cal rounds at enemy aircraft when Judge Amy Coney Barrett was asked about guns at day 2 of the Senate Supreme Court confirmation hearing.
No doubt Democrats reached for the smelling salts when Senate Judiciary Chairman Lindsey Graham asked the 7th U.S. Circuit judge and nominee to the Supreme Court if she owns a gun.
Stand back.
“When it comes to your personal views about this topic, do you own a gun?”
“We do own a gun.”
The point of the question was to allay fears that Barrett could evenhandedly consider cases such as gun rights and abortion regardless of her personal positions on them.
It was the only time, slight though it was, that Barrett seemed a little surprised by any question asked of her.
The reaction to her answer tells you all you need to know about why her family needs a gun to protect themselves. Hysteria gripped the professional pundit class.
Immediately, Barrett was called “extreme” by the usual anti-Second Amendment bunch allied with Michael Bloomberg’s anti-gun groups. Everytown for Gun Safety spat, “Coney Barrett indicated that her approach to considering cases would rely on historical interpretations of the 2A — not public safety — which is the same extreme, unsuccessful legal framework the NRA has tried to use.” You know, judging U.S. federal law by that pesky Constitution.
Bloomberg’s other anti-gun group, Moms Demand Action, clutched their pearls — no, really, they wear pearls to look more like June Cleaver and like less rabid, wild-eyed anti-civil rights nutters — and labeled Barrett’s position on guns as being one in favor of people dying.
Shannon R. Watts’s response to #SCOTUS nominee Amy Coney Barrett’s remarks that some people convicted of serious felonies should not be prohibited from owning guns: “She’s a dream come true for the NRA and a nightmare for the safety of the American people.”
They took issue with her dissenting opinion in Kanter v. Barr (2019) a case in which a non-violent shoemaker, who lied to customers and ripped off Medicare, sued to be able to regain his Second Amendment rights. As Duke University Law School’s Center for Firearms Law explains, the decision turned on the test of “whether the prohibition is justified by the individual’s perceived (1) lack of virtue or (2) propensity for violence.”
The majority opinion upheld removing Kanter’s rights under the Second Amendment. Barrett dissented.
Senator Diane Feinstein asked Barrett to explain her position now. Barrett said her opinion in the case shows how she looks at history, the language, text, and original intent in deciding cases. She said that the majority decided that the “Second Amendment does allow governments to keep guns out of the hands of the dangerous, so for example, the mentally ill or others who are likely to misuse guns.”
She was asked by Graham how cases such as abortion, Obamacare, and gun rights come before the courts over a period of years. After her Electric Company explanation to Graham, she said, “Judges can’t just wake up one day and say ‘I have an agenda. I like guns. I hate guns. I like abortion. I hate abortion.’ and walk in like a royal queen and impose their will on the world.” She said she’d “keep an open mind” on any case coming before the court.
A lot of people loved the fact that Judge Amy’s got a gun.
Amy's got a gun.
Amy's got a gun.
The Dems have come undone.
Even Feinstein is on the run. https://t.co/iJ6m0PdCRt— Jerry Bohl, Jr. (@jr_bohl) October 13, 2020
The Supreme Court hasn’t taken up a gun case since 2009, though Justice Clarence Thomas has pushed for the court to consider more of them. Maybe it will now.
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