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Posted on 05/06/2003 5:06:34 PM PDT by Dan from Michigan
NEWS RELEASE
Second Amendment Foundation
12500 NE Tenth Place
Bellevue, WA 98005
NINTH CIRCUIT RULING 'HARDLY A SURPRISE' TO SECOND AMENDMENT FOUNDATION
For Immediate Release:
BELLEVUE, WA - A decision today by the ultra-liberal Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco not to reconsider a December case in which two of its judges ruled the Second Amendment does not guarantee an individual right neither surprised, nor alarmed, the Second Amendment Foundation (SAF), .
"We are, after all, talking about the most over-turned federal appeals court in the country," observed SAF founder Alan Gottlieb. "This is the same court that ruled the Pledge of Allegiance to be unconstitutional because it contains the phrase 'under God'."
Whether the case of Silveira v. Lockyer - in which a three-judge panel of the Ninth Circuit ruled that the Second Amendment did not "afford rights to individuals with respect to private gun ownership or possession" - now moves to the U.S. Supreme Court remains in question. The Ninth Circuit's ruling deliberately took an opposing view to a 2001 ruling by the Fifth Circuit Court in New Orleans, in the case of U.S. v. Emerson, that the Second Amendment is protective of an individual right. The Justice Department under Attorney General John Ashcroft has adopted the individual rights position.
Gottlieb praised Judge Alex Kozinski for urging his fellow judges to reconsider the case with a larger 11-member panel. His compelling argument was that the Second Amendment is an insurance policy against tyranny. Judge Kozinski said the Second Amendment was written "for those exceptionally rare circumstances where all other rights have failed, where the government refuses to stand for re-election and silences those who protest, where courts have lost the courage to oppose, or can find no one to enforce their decrees."
"Judge Kozinski is a rare standout on the Ninth Circuit," Gottlieb stated. "The Ninth Circuit's December opinion was written by Judge Stephen Reinhardt, a leftist judicial activist. He's the same judge who considers the Pledge of Allegiance to be unconstitutional.
"While gun rights activists may be disappointed," Gottlieb concluded, "they are not discouraged. The Ninth Circuit made a preposterous ruling in December, and we are confident that it will not stand the test of time or scrutiny."
The Second Amendment Foundation is the nation's oldest and largest tax-exempt education, research, publishing and legal action group focusing on the Constitutional right and heritage to privately own and possess firearms. Founded in 1974, The Foundation has grown to more than 600,000 members and supporters and conducts many programs designed to better inform the public about the consequences of gun control. SAF has previously funded successful firearms-related suits against the cities of Los Angeles; New Haven, CT; and San Francisco on behalf of American gun owners, a lawsuit against the cities suing gun makers & an amicus brief & fund for the Emerson case holding the Second Amendment as an individual right.
" Judges know very well how to read the Constitution broadly when they are sympathetic to the right being asserted.... When a particular right comports especially well with our notions of good social policy, we build magnificent legal edifices on elliptical constitutional phrases --or even the white spaces between lines of constitutional text. ... But, as the panel amply demonstrates, when we're none too keen on a particular constitutional guarantee, we can be equally ingenious in burying language that is incontrovertibly there.
It is wrong to use some constitutional provisions as springboards for major social change while treating others like senile relatives to be cooped up in a nursing home until they quit annoying us. As guardians of the Constitution, we must be consistent in interpreting its provisions. If we adopt a jurisprudence sympathetic to individual rights, we must give broad compass to all constitutional provisions that protect individuals from tyranny. If we take a more statist approach, we must give all such provisions narrow scope. Expanding some to gargantuan proportions while discarding others like a crumpled gum wrapper is not faithfully applying the Constitution; it’s using our power as federal judges to constitutionalize our personal preferences.
... All too many of the other great tragedies of history—Stalin’s atrocities, the killing fields of Cambodia, the Holocaust, to name but a few—were perpetrated by armed troops against unarmed populations. Many could well have been avoided or mitigated, had the perpetrators known their intended victims were equipped with a rifle and twenty bullets apiece, as the Militia Act required here. See Kleinfeld Dissent at 5997-99. If a few hundred Jewish fighters in the Warsaw Ghetto could hold off the Wehrmacht for almost a month with only a handful of weapons, six million Jews armed with rifles could not so easily have been herded into cattle cars. My excellent colleagues have forgotten these bitter lessons of history. The prospect of tyranny may not grab the headlines the way vivid stories of gun crime routinely do. But few saw the Third Reich coming until it was too late. The Second Amendment is a doomsday provision, one designed for those exceptionally rare circumstances where all other rights have failed—where the government refuses to stand for reelection and silences those who protest; where courts have lost the courage to oppose, or can find no one to enforce their decrees.
However improbable these contingencies may seem today, facing them unprepared is a mistake a free people get to make only once. Fortunately, the Framers were wise enough to entrench the right of the people to keep and bear arms within our constitutional structure. The purpose and importance of that right was still fresh in their minds, and they spelled it out clearly so it would not be forgotten. Despite the panel’s mighty struggle to erase these words, they remain, and the people themselves can read what they say plainly enough:
A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed. The sheer ponderousness of the panel’s opinion—the mountain of verbiage it must deploy to explain away these fourteen short words of constitutional text—refutes its thesis far more convincingly than anything I might say. The panel’s labored effort to smother the Second Amendment by sheer body weight has all the grace of a sumo wrestler trying to kill a rattlesnake by sitting on it—and is just as likely to succeed."
Word will get back one way or another. I want Reinhardt gone. Most of the others(outside Kozinski and a couple others) gone as well, but I'll settle for Reinhardt alone, at least for now.
Conversely, FReepmail me if you want to be added.
And my apologies for any redundant pings.
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