“This case is just one more example of how the NRA fights every day, as it always has, to protect the Second Amendment rights of all law-abiding Americans.”
The National Rifle Association’s Institute for Legislative Action (NRA-ILA) said last week’s Supreme Court hearing on a New York City gun control law could ultimately strengthen the ability of law-abiding citizens to exercise their Second Amendment rights by making it harder for governments to impose gun control schemes.
The NRA-supported case, New York State Rifle and Pistol Association (NYSRPA) v. the City of New York, centers on New York City’s handgun “premises” license that restricts gun owners from transporting a handgun to a range or other residence outside city limits. After the NRA’s New York affiliate, the NYSRPA, challenged that law, and the Supreme Court took up the case, the City amended its regulation in an attempt to moot the case and prevent the high court from hearing it.
“It’s rare that SCOTUS takes on a Second Amendment case. It is perhaps unprecedented when a defendant, in this case New York City, tries to win by admitting they passed an unconstitutional law and revoking it in a last-ditch effort to stop the Court from hearing the case,” said Jason Ouimet, executive director, NRA-ILA. “Will other states facing similar NRA-supported challenges “throw in the towel” at the 11th hour as Justice Sotomayor says New York did in this case?
“This case is just one more example of how the NRA fights every day, as it always has, to protect the Second Amendment rights of all law-abiding Americans.”
The Supreme Court is expected to rule on this case before the end of June 2020.
New York City asks the U.S. Supreme Court to take a break in reviewing NYC’s anti-second-amendment policies… That’s NOT how the Supreme Court works! READ MORE
SOURCE: NRA-ILA
Chris W. Cox, executive director of NRA’s Institute for Legislative Action, issued the following statement in regards to last Friday’s attempt by the City of New York to dismiss the NRA-supported Supreme Court case N.Y. State Rifle & Pistol Association, et al. v. City of N.Y., et al.:
“The City of New York clearly knows that its current restrictions on the carrying and transportation of lawfully owned firearms are unconstitutional and will fail under any standard of constitutional review, as the NRA has been saying for years. Today, it asked the U.S. Supreme Court to ignore the Constitution and allow the City to slow walk a narrow expansion of its current policy through a lengthy bureaucratic process — the result of which, even if adopted, would still unduly infringe upon the fundamental, individual right to keep and bear arms under the Second Amendment. That is not how things work in the Supreme Court; the Court does not put its review on hold while the government embarks on a journey that at best might fix only a limited part of the constitutional defect. This is nothing more than a naked attempt by New York City to resist Supreme Court review of policies that even New York must recognize as inconsistent with the holdings in District of Columbia v. Heller and McDonald v. City of Chicago. The City of New York did not respect its citizens’ Second Amendment rights before the Supreme Court granted review in this case and it will not respect them going forward. We are confident that the Court will reject New York’s desperate attempt to avoid review of its blatantly unconstitutional laws.”
The National Rifle Association is very pleased with the U.S. Senate’s confirmation of Judge Brett Kavanaugh to serve as an associate justice on the United States Supreme Court.
“On behalf of our nearly six million members, the NRA congratulates Brett Kavanaugh on his confirmation to the U.S. Supreme Court,” said Chris W. Cox, executive director, National Rifle Association Institute for Legislative Action (NRA-ILA). “Kavanaugh is an eminently qualified jurist who will interpret the Constitution as the framers intended. He respects our Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms for self-defense.”
In the 2016 elections, voters made clear that the Supreme Court was an issue of critical importance. President Donald Trump has once again delivered on his promise of appointing constitutionally sound justices to our nation’s highest court.
“The NRA would like to thank President Trump for fulfilling his campaign promise to nominate pro-Second Amendment justices to the Supreme Court. The selections of Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh demonstrate President Trump’s unwavering support for our fundamental right to self-defense,” Cox continued.
The U.S. Senate confirmed Kavanaugh by a 50 to 48 vote. The NRA applauds all senators who voted in favor of Judge Kavanaugh’s confirmation and would especially like to thank Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) and Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-IA) for their leadership in this effort.
Former Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens claims that the concerns which underlie the 2nd amendment are a “relic of the 18th century” and that it should be repealed in its entirety. READ IT ALL
SOURCE: NRA-ILA
In 2008, Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens was on the losing side of District of. Columbia v. Heller, the landmark Supreme Court case that clearly recognized the Second Amendment protects an individual right to keep and bear arms independent of service in an organized militia. Stevens wrote a lengthy dissent, insisting that the framers of the amendment showed not “the slightest interest in limiting any legislature’s authority to regulate private civilian uses of firearms.” Years later, Stevens wrote a book which argued in favor of amending the Second Amendment to reverse the Heller decision and give his side the win. Recently, however, Stevens dropped the pretense of believing the Second Amendment has any value at all, arguing in a New York Times editorial that the concerns which underlie the amendment are a “relic of the 18th century” and that it should be repealed in its entirety.
Stevens insisted that the “civic engagement” of “schoolchildren” participating in recent antigun demonstrations “demand[s] our respect.” Yet his “respect” for the protestors ironically does not extend to trusting their ability to exercise their own fundamental rights, as he immediately turned to endorsing several ambitious gun control proposals, including increasing the minimum age to buy a gun from 18 to 21 years. He also signaled his support for “prohibiting civilian ownership of semiautomatic weapons” and “establishing more comprehensive background checks on all purchasers of firearms.” Stevens should perhaps be credited with being more intellectually honest and transparent than he has been in the past when he merely advocated for a narrow reading of the Second Amendment. Now he’s willing to admit he simply wants the amendment — and the right to individual and corporate defense that it serves — to go away altogether.
Stevens, however, had some further advice for the young protestors, encouraging them to “seek more effective and more lasting reform” by demanding “a repeal of the Second Amendment.” It would, he noted, “move Saturday’s marchers closer to their objective than any other possible reform.”
What’s particularly notable about Stevens’s argument is how dismissive he remains about the Second Amendment’s existing individual right, viewing it as no bar to banning all modern firearms and as allowing for broad classes of Americans to be categorically banned from acquiring any firearm at all.
But even that state of affairs is intolerable to him, because it still allows for the thought crime of believing the right to keep and bear arms has enduring value or any sort of instrumental role in limiting government authority. Worse still, the current status of the Second Amendment empowers the NRA in its advocacy and messaging efforts.
What Steven wants, in other words, is to completely shut down — not just the substance of the right to keep and bear arms — but the very legitimacy of defending it as an American value
As is often the case when gun control advocates feel emboldened, one of their more oblivious and politically inept standard bearers has embarrassed the whole movement by being too forthcoming about an “objective” still roundly rejected by a large majority of Americans. After the Stevens editorial appeared, the Washington Post quickly reported on a February poll in which 60% of Americans opposed repealing the Second Amendment, a rate three times higher than for support of a repeal. Such a move is hardly the “simple” solution that Stevens portrays it to be. As NRA-ILA Executive Director Chris Cox said in response to Stevens’s comments: “The men and women of the National Rifle Association, along with the majority of the American people and the Supreme Court, believe in the Second Amendment right to self-protection and we will unapologetically continue to fight to protect this fundamental freedom.”
Indeed, within hours of the New York Times publishing the Stevens editorial, an article appeared in the Washington Post characterizing Stevens’s comments as “supremely unhelpfull” and proving that the Post’s writers aren’t wrong about everything. “In one fell swoop,” the article laments, Stevens has lent credence to the talking point that the left really just wants to get rid of gun ownership and reasserted the need for gun-rights supporters to prevent his ilk from ever being appointed again (with the most obvious answer being: Vote Republican).”
We couldn’t have said it better ourselves.
Stories abound about some of the more overreaching and extreme views that were expressed during the antigun March in Washington. Yet while youthful calls for a “gun free world” can be chalked up to innocent idealism, no one can claim that a man who sat on the U.S. Supreme Court during the heyday of the handgun ban era and personally participated in the Heller case did not speak knowingly and deliberately. He was, in fact, simply expressing the prevailing opinion of the law’s liberal elite, however unartfully.
Stevens should perhaps be credited with being more intellectually honest and transparent than he has been in the past when he merely advocated for a narrow reading of the Second Amendment. Now he’s willing to admit he simply wants the amendment — and the right to individual and corporate defense that it serves — to go away altogether.
He’s also right that this, ultimately, is the “objective” behind the long-standing movement that is lately receiving a boost from some well-meaning and earnest young activists.
And whether gun owners hear it from a 17-year-old high school student or a 97-year-old retired Supreme Court Justice, they’d do well to listen carefully. Today’s antigun advocacy merely foreshadows tomorrow’s abolition of your rights.
That’s why the NRA will not yield real rights for symbolic measures that offer no public safety benefits. As NRA-ILA Executive Director Chris Cox said in response to Stevens’s comments: “The men and women of the National Rifle Association, along with the majority of the American people and the Supreme Court, believe in the Second Amendment right to self-protection and we will unapologetically continue to fight to protect this fundamental freedom.”
This new act would put a stop to the inconsistencies between state and federal firearms laws. Important!
Source: NRA-ILA
Last week, Congressman Chris Collins (R-NY) introduced legislation that would shield popular rifles and shotguns, including the AR-15, from being banned under state laws. The bill, known as the Second Amendment Guarantee Act (SAGA), would also protect parts for these firearms, including detachable magazines and ammunition feeding devices.
The bill is a response to antigun laws in a small handful of states — including California, Connecticut, D.C., Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, and New York — that criminalize the mere possession of highly popular semiautomatic long guns widely available throughout the rest of the country. Although rifles or shotguns of any sort are used less often in murders than knives, blunt objects such as clubs or hammers, or even hands, fists, and feet, gun control advocates have sought to portray the banned guns as somehow uniquely dangerous to public safety.
Anti-gunners’ focus on these so-called “assault weapons” was renewed after the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2008 decision in District of Columbia v. Heller. That decision made clear that handguns — by far the type of firearm most commonly used in crime — were subject to Second Amendment protection and could not be banned. This led gun control advocates to seek out other sorts of guns to demonize, and they’ve since been strenuously promoting the myth that semiautomatic rifles and shotguns with certain features such as detachable magazines, pistol grips or adjustable stocks are “weapons of war” with no legitimate civilian use.
Yet Americans overwhelmingly choose these types of firearms for legitimate purposes, including protection of their homes and properties, “three-gun” and other practical shooting sports, and hunting and pest control. And, indeed, the states’ legislative attempts to ban these guns has spurred a market for innovative products that use the same basic calibers and firing mechanisms, but with stock, grip, and accessory configurations that comply with legislative guidelines.
Although the U.S. Supreme Court has yet to review any of these state bans, lower courts have come up with increasingly strained readings of the Second Amendment and Supreme Court precedents to try to justify them. The Seventh Circuit, for example, held that even if a ban’s incursion on Second Amendment rights had no beneficial effect on safety whatsoever, it could still be justified on the basis of the false sense of security it might impart to local residents with exaggerated fears of the banned guns. “[I]f it has no other effect,” the majority opinion stated, the challenged “ordinance may increase the public’s sense of safety.” That’s hardly an acceptable offset for the infringement of a constitutional right.
Members of the Supreme Court have criticized their colleagues for failing to review these cases and the lower courts for misapplying Supreme Court precedent. As noted in a dissent filed by Justice Clarence Thomas and joined by Heller’s author, the late Justice Antonin Scalia, “Roughly five million Americans own AR-style semiautomatic rifles.” Moreover, the “overwhelming majority of citizens who own and use such rifles do so for lawful purposes, including self-defense and target shooting.” “Under our precedents,” Thomas concluded, “that is all that is needed for citizens to have a right under the Second Amendment to keep such weapons.”
With states’ violating Americans’ rights and federal courts allowing them to act with impunity, it is up to Congress to ensure that all Americans, wherever they may live, have access the best, most modern and innovative firearms for their lawful needs, including the protection of themselves and their families.
The SAGA would ensure that state regulations could not effectively prevent the manufacture, sale, importation, or possession of any rifle or shotgun lawfully available under federal law or impose any prohibitive taxes, fees, or design limitations on such firearms.
The NRA thanks Rep. Chris Collins for leading this important effort and urges his colleagues to cosponsor and support this staunchly pro-gun legislation.
Please contact your U.S. Representative and ask him or her to cosponsor and support H.R. 3576, the Second Amendment Guarantee Act. You can call your U.S. Representative at 202-225-3121.
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