Firearms Owners Against Crime
Institute for Legal, Legislative and Educational Action
Institute for Legal, Legislative and Educational Action
President Donald Trump says he’ll announce his pick to fill the newly-vacant seat on the Supreme Court by the end of the week, and says he’s narrowed down the list of possibilities to five individuals. On today’s Bearing Arms’ Cam & Co, Amy Swearer of the Heritage Foundation joins me to talk about the importance of the upcoming confirmation fight in terms of our right to keep and bear arms, as well as delving a little bit into the Second Amendment records of one of the potential nominees.
During an interview on Fox & Friends, the president said that he’ll wait until after services are held for Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who passed away on Friday after battling pancreatic cancer, but that he believes a confirmation vote should be held before the election in November.
“I think it will be on Friday or Saturday and we want to pay respect, it looks like we will have services on Thursday or Friday, as I understand it, and I think we should, with all due respect for Justice Ginsburg, wait for services to be over,” the president said.
The president’s shortlist is said to include Judge Amy Coney Barrett from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, Judge Barbara Logoa of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit, and Judge Allison Jones Rushing of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit, among others.
The president touted the list of potential picks, calling them “excellent,” and “all very smart.”
“No matter how you would look at it, these are the finest people in the nation—young people, pretty young for the most part,” the president said.
Barrett is 48, Lagoa is 52, Rushing is 38, and it is unclear the age of the president’s other potential nominees.
“These are the smartest people, the smartest young people, you like to go young, because they’re there for a long time,” Trump said, adding that his nominee would “abide by the Constitution,” be a “good person” and have “very, very high moral values.”
With Democrats vowing to pack the Court if Trump’s appointee wins confirmation and Joe Biden wins in November, the stakes for the election and the future of the Supreme Court have never been higher. For gun owners, a Trump appointee would provide new life for Second Amendment challenges, which have been turned away in recent months, but a Democrat-packed SCOTUS could curtail the right to keep and bear arms for generations to come.
As for the potential nominees, Swearer notes that several of them, including rumored-front runner Judge Amy Comey Barrett, are on the record recognizing the fundamental nature of the right to keep and bear arms, but even those who don’t have much of a history with Second Amendment jurisprudence, like Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Barbara Lagoa, have demonstrated their fealty to the Constitution as it is written. That’s the type of justice who needs to be on the Supreme Court, according to Swearer, who says that any Biden picks would likely adhere to a worldview that sees the Constitution as a living and ever-changing document that means whatever a majority of justices says it means.
If that’s the case, you can likely kiss the Second Amendment goodbye. Even if a Biden-packed Supreme Court doesn’t outright overturn the Heller and McDonald decisions, they could gut the Second Amendment by reducing the right to a privilege. Sure, you can own a handgun for home protection, as long as you don’t mind waiting a year to be approved, forking over hundreds of dollars in non-refundable fees, and run the risk of being turned down for any reason or no reason whatsoever.
The Supreme Court has already let several awful laws stand because of its refusal to hear challenges to California’s microstamping law, gun and magazine bans, and may-issue carry laws requiring applicants to show a “justifiable need” in order to exercise their Second Amendment rights. A Court that’s downright hostile to the Second Amendment could do far more damage, and regardless of what happens with Trump’s nominee before the election, if Joe Biden wins in November that’s almost certainly what we should expect from his Supreme Court makeover.
Cam Edwards has covered the 2nd Amendment for more than 15 years as a broadcast and online journalist, as well as the co-author of "Heavy Lifting: Grow Up, Get a Job, Start a Family, and Other Manly Advice" with Jim Geraghty. He lives outside of Farmville, Virginia with his family. https://bearingarms.com/author/camedwards/
https://bearingarms.com/cam-e/2020/09/21/supreme-court-showdown-future-of-2a/