OBAMA’S ANTI-GUN STRATEGY IS TO STACK COURTS, SAYS CCRKBA

BELLEVUE, WA – Failing to get traction for his anti-gun agenda in Congress, Barack Obama is trying instead to stack the federal courts with liberal anti-gunners, the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms said today.

“President Obama’s gun prohibitionist agenda has fallen on deaf ears on Capitol Hill,” said CCRKBA Chairman Alan Gottlieb. “His administration’s attempt to revive the ban on semiautomatic sporting rifles by exploiting the Mexican drug war was a bust. He had to sign legislation allowing guns for personal protection in national parks, even after his Justice Department refused to defend the Interior Department against a lawsuit that prevented an earlier firearms rule from taking effect.

“But now he is picking judicial nominees that will almost certainly legislate from the bench,” he continued. “Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor has already ruled that the Second Amendment does not apply to the states. We’ve learned that Sotomayor’s nomination is supported by ACORN, the publicly-funded anti-gun group that supported a Jersey City gun control ordinance that was struck down by the court.

“Obama’s nomination of David Hamilton to a position on the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals is equally troubling,” Gottlieb added, “because Hamilton reportedly is a former ACORN fundraiser. Even the president once worked with the anti-gun rights ACORN as a leadership trainer.

“Seventy years ago, President Franklin D. Roosevelt tried to stack the Supreme Court to push his social agenda, and he failed,” Gottlieb recalled. “President Obama tried to use his cabinet to rally support for a gun ban renewal and he failed, so now he’s planning to stack the courts with anti-gun ACORN nominees.

“America has had enough Left-wing judicial activism from the federal bench,” he concluded. “In Judge Sotomayor’s own words, ‘I don’t believe we should bend the Constitution under any circumstances. It says what it says. We should do honor to it.’ That includes honoring the Second Amendment. It does not include manipulating the courts to accomplish from the bench what cannot be achieved through Congress.”