Posted on 08/24/2018 6:44:14 AM PDT by Kaslin
Gun control advocates are extremely distressed by President Trump’s nomination of Judge Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court. Michael Bloomberg’s anti-gun rights group, Everytown for Gun Safety, fears that “Judge Kavanaugh has applied an extreme and dangerous interpretation of the Second Amendment when determining whether a law is constitutional, one that does not take into account a law’s impact on public safety.”
Since 2010, the Supreme Court’s last gun control decision, the Court has turned away at least 15 gun-rights cases, including several challenges to prohibitions on semi-automatic assault rifles and on public carry of firearms. Gun control advocates hoped that the Supreme Court would overturn unfavorable lower court decisions. Some believe that Justice Anthony Kennedy stopped the court from taking these cases, but it could just as easily have been Chief Justice John Roberts, who places considerable weight on building consensus and is willing to put off dealing with contentious issues. Rarely is any information released on who voted to hear these appeals.
Gun control advocates are most upset by a 2011 dissent in which Kavanaugh voted to strike down Washington, D.C.’s ban on most semi-automatic rifles. Two other judges voted to uphold the ban, so Kavanaugh lost the vote.
Yet, it's easy to read too much into any one case, especially when a judge is simply following precedent set by the Supreme Court — in this case, precedent from the 2008 Heller decision that struck down D.C.’s handgun ban. "As a lower court, however, it is not our role to re-litigate Heller or to bend it in any particular direction,” Kavanaugh wrote. "Our sole job is to faithfully apply Heller and the approach it set forth for analyzing gun bans and regulations.”
District and Circuit court judges are supposed to follow Supreme Court precedent, whether or not they personally agree with the decision. When a judge ignores precedent, it is easy to infer that he is acting on his own political biases. But Kavanaugh has been a consistent follower of precedent while he has been on the D.C. Circuit Court, widely acknowledged to be the nation’s second highest court, just below the Supreme Court.
The Supreme Court can over rule its own precedent, but Democrats ignore that Kavanaugh has co-authored with a heft 942 page book on precedent, titled the Law of Judicial Precedent. The book seeks to formerly describe rules when courts should follow precedent, and it makes clear that jettisoning precedent is not something that he takes lightly.
Despite the hyperventilating, Kavanaugh hasn’t taken a particularly strong self-defense rights view of Supreme Court precedent: “Heller largely preserved the status quo of gun regulation in the United States. Heller established that traditional and common gun laws in the United States remain constitutionally permissible.”
Kavanaugh showed consistent respect for precedent, but the left insists that he is dangerous because he supposedly won’t follow precedent when it comes to Roe v Wade. But during his confirmation hearing to the D.C. Circuit Court in 2006, Kavanaugh promised, “I would follow Roe v Wade faithfully and fully.” In language very similar to what he said to justify his decision on D.C.’s rifle ban, Kavanaugh explained that Roe v Wade would be, “Binding precedent of the court. It’s been decided by the Supreme Court.”
Bloomberg’s Everytown is also simply wrong when it says that Kavanaugh “does not take into account a law’s impact on public safety.” For example, on page 33 of his dissent, Kavanaugh compares the safety issues for semi-automatic handguns and semi-automatic rifles. On pages 42 and 43 he compares the relative safety aspects of licensing versus registration laws.
Maybe gun control advocates don't like that Kavanaugh actually knows something about guns. While other judges seemed to think that military-style assault weapons are somehow different from other types of semi-automatic rifles, Kavanaugh understood the word “style.” These guns may look like military weapons, but they fire one bullet per trigger-pull, just like any other semi-automatic.
Kavanaugh notes of the D.C. law: "It bans certain semi-automatic rifles but not others – with no particular explanation or rationale for why some made the list and some did not. The list appears to be haphazard."
Liberals don’t seem to understand that there are judges who actually follow the rules, not their personal views. In addition, Kavanaugh is hardly the wide-eyed radical gun control opponent advocates paint him to be. He believes that “regulations on the sale, possession, or use of guns are permissible” and that the Heller decision “largely preserved the status quo of gun regulation in the United States.”
Interpretation? What interpretation? “…Shall Not Be Infringed.” That’s it.
Good. The more distressed the gun grabbers are the happier I am. Let them all rot in their own vile anti-freedom vitriol.
"one that does not take into account a law’s impact on public safety."
If there was clear and incontrovertible evidence that gun control measures did significantly improve public safety, I'd listen to them, politely, before I decided that fundamental rights took precedence over utilitarian concerns.
But there is not clear and incontrovertible evidence that gun control measures significantly improve public safety. In fact, the best evidence ranges from gun control measures have no effect to having a minor negative effect.
So I feel no need to be polite when I ignore them and everything they say.
Likely meant to write "formally describe rules."
The more Bloomberg and the Gun Grabbers whine, the happier I am. I’ll be glad to have Kavanaugh confirmed.
I’ll be even more glad when Trump gets to replace some of the Gang of Four on the Supreme Court with judges who will actually uphold the original intent of the Founders rather than vote based on their Leftist ideology.
Much was made that he is a Constitutional originalist but that cannot be so if he is welded to precedent or 'laws in common use' as far as guns go.
The gun control lobby has been attacking the 2nd amendment for a very long time so 'common use' can mean anything not in favor of the 2nd amendment.
Unfortunately I see another Roberts in Kavanaugh.
I have been deelighted since Trump’s election. Their brains are exploding.
I just hooe enough independents and Republicans come out and give Trump the unorecedented - midterm electiin GAINS!
Do THAT, and America will look like the movie “Mars Attacks” with exploding alien brains littering the landscape with green goo, except instead if Martians, libtards brains will litter the landscape, blow apart by their own hatred and vitriol.
But be assured, more illegals and dead people will be recruited by the Dems than ever before, not to mention people who cast multiple ballots.
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