NRA Opposed To Kagan Nomination To U.S. Supreme Court
Thursday, July 01, 2010
Joint Statement by
Wayne LaPierre, NRA Executive Vice President & CEO,
and Chris Cox, Executive Director of NRA's Institute for
Legislative Action
There may be no vote a United States Senator casts that is
more important than a vote to confirm a nominee to the U.S. Supreme
Court. Now that the Court has clearly stated that the
Second Amendment is a fundamental, individual right that applies to
all law-abiding Americans, NRA members and gun owners expect a
nominee to the Court to fully support, defend and preserve that
freedom.
We have carefully examined the career, written documents
and public statements of nominee Elena Kagan and have found nothing
to indicate any support for the Second Amendment. On the contrary,
the facts reveal a nominee who opposes Second Amendment rights and
is clearly out of step with mainstream Americans.
Therefore, the NRA is strongly opposed to Kagan's
confirmation to the Court.
In testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee, she
refused to declare support for the Second Amendment, saying only
that the matter was "settled law."
This was eerily similar to the scripted testimony of
Justice Sonia Sotomayor last year, prior to her confirmation to the
Court. When pressed on the Second Amendment then, Sotomayor also
referred to the issue as "settled law."
But in the recently decided case of McDonald v. City
of Chicago, Sotomayor ignored the "settled law" of the
Heller decision and signed a dissenting opinion that
declared, "I can find nothing in the Second Amendment's text,
history, or underlying rationale that could warrant characterizing
it as 'fundamental' insofar as it seeks to protect the keeping and
bearing of arms for private self-defense purposes."
It has become obvious that "settled law" is the scripted
code of an anti-gun nominee's confirmation effort. The NRA is not
fooled. No member of the U.S. Senate should be either.
With no judicial record, only Kagan's political career can
be reviewed. And this provides no reason to trust her with
Americans' firearms freedom. Throughout her career, she has
repeatedly demonstrated a clear hostility to the fundamental,
individual right to keep and bear arms under the U.S.
Constitution.
As a clerk for Justice Thurgood Marshall, Kagan said she
was "not sympathetic" to a challenge to Washington, DC's ban on
firearms. As a domestic policy advisor in the Clinton White House,
a colleague described her as "immersed" in Clinton's aggressive
assaults on the Second Amendment. She was involved in Clinton's
scheme to ban more than 50 types of commonly-owned semiautomatic
firearms - an effort described as "â¦taking the law and bending it
as far as we can to capture a whole new class of guns."
As U.S. Solicitor General, Kagan chose not to file a brief
last year in the landmark McDonald case, thus taking the
position that incorporating the Second Amendment and applying it to
the states was of no interest to the Obama Administration or the
federal government.
These are not the positions of a person who supports the Second
Amendment and, in fact, represent a clear and present danger to the
right to keep and bear arms.
Kagan's record clearly reveals that she does not believe
that the Second Amendment guarantees a fundamental right. In her
recent testimony, she refused to acknowledge respect for the
God-given right of self-defense.
She should not serve on any court, let alone be confirmed
to a lifetime seat on the highest court in the land.
The NRA is strongly opposed to the confirmation of Elena
Kagan to the U.S. Supreme Court. This vote matters and will be a
part of future candidate evaluations.
-- nraila.org --
Read NRA's letter of
opposition to Solicitor General Elena Kagan's confirmation to the
U.S. Supreme Court
http://www.nraila.org/media/PDFs/Kagan.pdf