After the death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg of the Supreme Court, Nominee Amy Coney Barrett was announced to fill the Associate Justice of the Supreme Court position by President Trump. Amy Coney Barrett was appointed as a Federal Judge through bipartisan support in 2017. Of course, with the fight between Democrats and Republicans for control, someone who has already been vetted by both parties is now under fire from the left.
While the only mention of Amy Coney Barrett during the first Presidential debate focused around the Affordable Care Act, what will her placement mean for firearm owners and supporters of the Second Amendment?
Amy Coney Barrett is a firm supporter of Second Amendment rights.
During her short stint as a Federal Judge, she defended a person’s right to own a firearm against laws that were too broad. The primary focus was that until there is sufficient evidence that the person poses an actual risk, they should not have this right taken away.
That case in particular revolved around a convicted felon. However, this felon had been convicted of a non-violent crime- mail fraud. In this, the laws stating that felons cannot own firearms are just too broad as defined by Barrett. There is no reasonable danger from that specific person, therefore his rights should not be removed.
She states that the Second Amendment “confers an individual right, intimately connected with the natural right of self-defense and not limited to civic participation.”
The left, as with most things – just publicize that Barrett “believes felons should have guns” – while ignoring the facts surrounding that single decision.
Barrett is a person having a broad view regarding gun-ownership – seeing it as a basic right that should not be overregulated. In this, there is chatter that her nomination may again open the Supreme Court to revisit laws and issues surrounding the Second Amendment that they have avoided since 2011.
Her style regarding how such Constitutional rights are defined is simply the way there were intended originally. Nothing more, nothing less – she is a firm believer in the importance surrounding the era of this country’s founding and the reasons the founders wrote these rights.
She is the first Supreme Court nominee to serve while having school-aged children, a mother of a special needs child, and a southern girl from Louisiana. She also graduated from Notre Dame Law School, making her the first justice not to graduate from Harvard or Yale. For many, this makes her a true representative of the average American who believes that “Judges are not policymakers.”
There is a lot of hope that her placement will be the last piece of the puzzle needed to open the Supreme Court to hear more cases regarding firearms and the rights surrounding them. Barrett’s presence here is the additional vote needed to hear these cases.
She also creates the fifth vote needed for the court to broaden our gun rights and possibly roll back some current regulation, regardless of the views of the Chief Justice. This is good news for firearms owners and advocates of the Second Amendment.
