News reports like the video above portray Obama’s nomination of “centrist” Merrick Garland to fill Justice Scalia’s vacant seat on the Supreme Court as some sort of reasonable outreach by Obama to the Senate. “Above politics” indeed — that’s the only way they can implement their agenda.
Make no mistake, the Garland nomination is a direct, bold, unambiguous attack on the Second Amendment. He was seen as a potential threat even before Obama was elected, with Dave Kopel writing in the October 2008 edition of America’s 1st Freedom:
Merrick Garland is a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. He could be counted on not only to oppose Second Amendment rights in general, but even to nullify explicit congressional statutes that protect those rights.
In 2007, a three-judge panel of the D.C. Circuit ruled against the D.C. handgun ban in the case of Parker v. District of Columbia (which was the name of the case that eventually became District of Columbia v. Heller when it went before the Supreme Court). The D.C. government asked for a rehearing of the case, before all 10 judges of the D.C. Circuit.
Six judges voted not to rehear the case, while four judges voted for a rehearing, presumably because they disagreed with the three-judge panel that had ruled against the handgun ban. Garland was one of the four judges who wanted a chance to validate the handgun ban.
In 2000, Garland was on a three-judge panel that heard the case of NRA v. Reno. In that case, the Janet Reno Department of Justice had flouted the congressional statutes that prohibit the federal government from compiling a registration list of gun owners, and which required the destruction of national instant check (NICS) records of lawful, approved gun purchases.
Judge Garland voted to let Reno get away with it. He said that registering all the people who were approved by NICS was permissible because Reno was not registering every gun owner in the country. And he said it was fine for Reno to keep gun buyer records for six months because although Congress had said the records must be destroyed, it did not say “immediately.”
Fast forward to 2016. We have seen the RINO-controlled Senate confirm Obama nominees who were clearly on the record against the right to bear arms, and have to rely on those same Senate leaders to reject the Garland nomination.
The Second Amendment Foundation (SAF) firmly opposes the Garland nomination here.
The National Rifle Association (NRA) firmly opposes the Garland nomination here.
Gun Owners of America (GOA) firmly opposes the Garland nomination here.
Fight. Win. Our right to bear arms must be the litmus test for every candidate — even if the media fails to bring up the issue.
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David R. Duringer, JD, LL.M, is a concealed firearm instructor and tax lawyer specializing in business and estate planning. He is managing shareholder at Protective Law Corporation, serving Southern California from its Laguna Hills (Orange County) headquarters and a satellite office in Coronado (San Diego County).
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