With the nomination of Judge Sonia Sotomayor to fill the Supreme Court seat of retiring Associate Justice David Souter, President Obama has thrown down the gauntlet to gun owners all across America. Judge Sotomayor has a long history of hostility to gun owners, from the time she wrote her senior thesis at Princeton, titled “America’s deadly obsession with guns.†In January of this year, as a judge on the Second Circuit Court of Appeals in New York City, she wrote that the individual right to keep and bear arms affirmed by the Second Amendment does NOT apply to the states.
This was only six months after the Supreme Court formally affirmed the individual right to arms in District of Columbia versus Heller. Because Heller was a D.C. case, the Supreme Court did not “incorporate†it to the states under the 14th Amendment. They left that to later courts to decide. Judge Sotomayor came down firmly AGAINST the rights of gun owners. Following the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals’ decision to incorporate the Second Amendment to the states, this leaves the door open to a Supreme Court challenge on the issue of incorporation, a challenge that a Supreme Court Justice Sotomayor could vote on.
Federal judicial appointments are lifetime appointments. Judge Sotomayor is only 54 years old, so it is reasonable to assume she will be in a position to serve on the Court for decades to come, long after Barack Obama has left office. But… all federal judicial appointments must be confirmed by the U.S. Senate.
Once again the Senate is the focus of our attention. Write, e-mail or call your U.S. Senators today. Direct internet links to your Senators can be found at http://www.senate.gov, or by clicking on the “Contact your Senator†in the left margin of the CCRKBA web site at https://ccrkba.org. Your Senators’ home district office addresses and telephone numbers may be found in the blue “Government†pages of your local telephone directory.
