On Wednesday Barack Obama nominated Judge Merrick Garland as his Supreme Court pick to replace Justice Antonin Scalia. Garland has conservatives up in arms over his past opposition to the Second Amendment.
The Daily Signal reported:
The conservative Judicial Crisis Network describes Garland, who the Senate did not confirm until 1997, as “a reliable fifth vote for a laundry list of extreme liberal priorities like gutting the Second Amendment.”
Also as an appeals court judge, Garland voted in 2007 to reverse a D.C. Circuit Court decision that struck down Washington’s handgun ban as unconstitutional. At the time, pro-gun commentator Dave Kopel wrote that Garland’s vote came as “no surprise” because the jurist already had “signaled [his] strong hostility to gun owner rights.”
When the case eventually came before the Supreme Court in 2008, the justices ruled definitively that citizens possess a fundamental right to own guns for lawful purposes.
The NRA released a video this month to refute an anti-gun nominee like Judge Garland.
The NRA ad features a Venezuelan immigrant who was disarmed by her former Socialist government.
The Free Beacon reported:
“I emigrated from Venezuela—one of the most dangerous countries in the world today,” she said. “A few years ago, the government came for our guns. We were told we would be safer without them.”
“Of course, the politicians, the rich and famous, their bodyguards and criminals—they still have their guns. Everyone else lives in fear. Mothers and fathers are powerless to defend their families. But the drug cartels and gangs—the colectivos—still have all the guns they want. And 90 percent of murders are never solved. The biggest mistake Venezuelans made was believing that this could never happen.”
She closed the video with a warning to Americans.
“Today, they would do anything for the Second Amendment freedom that we enjoy as Americans. Never ever take it for granted.”