Mitch McConnell Supreme court packing
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

BELLEVUE, WA — The Second Amendment Foundation today applauds all 53 Senate Republicans, led by Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, for defending the U.S. Supreme Court from bullying by five Democrats who openly threatened the high court with political retribution if it does not dismiss an important Second Amendment challenge to a New York City gun control law.

In a strongly-worded letter to Supreme Court Clerk Scott S. Harris, Sen. McConnell and his colleagues blasted a Democrat amicus brief to the high court urging dismissal of a case challenging the law that essentially threatens to pack the court if it doesn’t comply.

SAF has filed an amicus brief in the case, urging that the Supreme Court overturn New York City’s infringement of Second Amendment rights. The case is known as New York Rifle & Pistol Association v. City of New York.

“Democrats in Congress,” the letter states, “and on the presidential campaign trail, have peddled plans to pack this Court with more justices in order to further their radical legislative agenda.”

Senators Sheldon Whitehouse (RI), Mazie Hirono (HI), Kirsten Gillibrand (NY), Dick Durbin (IL) and Richard Blumenthal (CT) filed an amicus brief that essentially accused five justices, including Chief Justice John Roberts, of accepting the case for the political purpose of creating a precedent that will allow other gun laws to be challenged. The law was so extreme that New York amended it in an attempt to avoid a court showdown.

“If the court dismisses this case,” said SAF founder and Executive Vice President Alan M. Gottlieb, “there is nothing to prevent New York City from re-enacting the statute. In addition, the gun prohibition lobby is rightly concerned that a ruling against New York City could also apply to other states and cities’ infringements on Second Amendment rights.”

“We’re proud of Sen. McConnell and his colleagues,” Gottlieb added. “We have never before seen such an outrageous effort by anti-gun extremists on Capitol Hill to subvert the constitutional process. I was personally appalled by the brief. Just when you think opponents of the Second Amendment can’t sink any lower, they surprise you.”

In their brief, Whitehouse and his fellow Democrats concluded, “The Supreme Court is not well. And the people know it. Perhaps the Court can heal itself before the public demands it be ‘restructured in order to reduce the influence of politics.’ Particularly on the urgent issue of gun control, a nation desperately needs it to heal.”

“The implication,” says McConnell in his letter, “is as plain as day: Dismiss this case, or we’ll pack the court.”

“Evidently,” Gottlieb continued, “the five senators signing onto this brief are terrified that the nation’s high court is about to examine the extreme nature of local gun control laws and their constitutionality under the Second Amendment.

“Instead of the Supreme Court dismissing the case,” Gottlieb stated, “we believe the court should reject the amicus brief. It is an insult to the court’s integrity, and to the Constitution, itself.

“Contrary to what the Whitehouse Five contends in their brief,” he said, “the nation needs the Supreme Court to take Second Amendment cases and determine whether laws such as the one in New York are infringements, and then provide guidance to the lower courts about where the constitutional line may be drawn.

“McConnell and the Senate Republicans have clearly had enough of Democrat demagoguery,” Gottlieb observed. “Their amicus brief is further evidence that they would happily erase the Scone Amendment from the Bill of Rights, but they want the Supreme Court to do that, rather than risk the political fallout. Sen. McConnell and the Senate Majority are telling them ‘No.’

“Having crossed the line in their attempt to coerce the court, Whitehouse and his four colleagues have shown their disdain for constitutional rights and our system of checks and balances against unconstitutional laws,” he concluded.

The Second Amendment Foundation (www.saf.org) is the nation’s oldest and largest tax-exempt education, research, publishing and legal action group focusing on the Constitutional right and heritage to privately own and possess firearms. Founded in 1974, The Foundation has grown to more than 650,000 members and supporters and conducts many programs designed to better inform the public about the consequences of gun control.

 

 

 

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35 COMMENTS

  1. Personally, I am rather a fan of the Whitehouse amicus brief. It demonstrates how desperately the Democrats are to avoid having the Court consider another Second Amendment case, especially not one involving “to bear,” and by its glaring and offensive example demonstrates the clear necessity of Supreme Court review in this important area of the law.

    • “…am rather a fan of the Whitehouse amicus brief. It demonstrates how desperately the Democrats are to avoid having the Court consider another Second Amendment case, especially not one involving “to bear,”…”

      You have a point, in a rather painful way…

      A question for those well-versed in Federal law –

      If one (or more) are criminally charged with threatening a Federal official, are there additional penalties if the one(s) making that threat have the power to make good and carry out that threat?

      As it is now, they are getting away scot-free with that despicable act. That is seriously fucked-up in a Nation supposedly made of laws that must be followed by all or they are worthless.

      If no hammer comes down *hard* on them for that, they are now emboldened to do so again in the future, or even worse. There have to be drastic consequences for pulling a stunt like that, or we are truly on the path to the destruction of this nation…

  2. Ehh… call me black pilled but I find myself unimpressed with these hollow words from the GOP. Few people in the government support the 2A at all and the right only occasionally resist calls for more gun controls instead clapping back against the lunatic left and their totalitarian BS.

    • There are only 2 ways you can loose your 2A Rights. Willingly giving them up. Having them pried from your cold dead fingers. Yes it is that simple. If you truly believe you have the Right in the first place. If Our generation refuses to meet and defeat the onslaught on 2A Rights. We will have turned OUR backs on the very Rights. Our ancestors fought to Protect and Preserve. Along with leaving Our children and grandchildren. A life never knowing what True Freedom means. History will see Us for what We truly were. Cowards in the face of Tyranny. In what used to be the Greatest Nation on earth. Keep Your Powder Dry.

      • Yes…… ^^^^THIS ^^^^
        IF WE STAND BY AND ALLOW THIS, WE WILL BE CONSIDERED THE PRECURSORS TO THE PROBLEM….
        Americans need to stand up to the infiltrated government…. All you have to do is study the actions of ALL politicians, you can see they all work together to sow discord…. It’s a cast of characters assembled by a shadow government…
        Will we wake up before it’s too late?

  4. 1 — The constitution says what it says.

    2 — Pass an amendment if you want to change that.

    3 — Maybe having less stuff federal is a way to let people make their own, different choices.

    Of course, none of that fits with using govt to coerce people into doing what you think they should do, more like you. Or with the broader program of advancing humanity to what the betters (Just ask them.) know it should be: to “fundamentally tranform” the country, to borrow a phrase, to impose the “verdict of history”, the “historical imperative” or any number of other inevitabilities that don’t seem to come along without help, to manifest what the betters know is the nature and destiny of the country (vs the charter, or what the deplorables want), the “gleichshaltung” one might say.

    It’s remarkably the creativity and energy they apply to transform a charter for diverse self-government into an authorization of Hobbes’ Leviathan. One wonders what they could accomplish applied to something useful?

    P. S.

    Packing the court is a lovely idea. We have a broader, more representative court. It’s called the people, which the same grifters have been packing for decades.

    I can win any vote, when I get to pick who votes. Or who counts them, as Lenin said.

  5. I had no idea the Scone Amendment was under such dire threat.

    My God! They’ll be after the Cucumber Clause next!!!

    • Cucumbers are the assault weapons of the vegetable world, and it’s a shame that any child can just pick one up in the produce aisle and wave it around and maybe even (gasp…) eat it.

      Revoke the Cucumber Clause, I don’t care, but don’t you dare violate my right to bake and dip scones! The Scone Amendment is in the Rill of Bites for a reason!

      • “Cucumbers are the assault weapons of the vegetable world,…)

        Careful, Ing. –

        Cucumbers are very popular in the gay community as an all-natural substitute for providing a ‘filling’ feeling in certain parts of the human body. *cough*. 🙂

        If the Bard was right and “Hell has no fury like a woman scorned”, you really don’t want to experience the rage of a sexually deprived person not able to use the all-natural vegtable substitute of their choice…

        *snicker* 😉

      • Mr. Ing, by calling the cucumbers “the assault weapons of the vegetable world,” you do a great disservice to those of us who may enjoy an occasional cucumber and onion salad in a delicate vinaigrette and fennel seed dressing. “Dressing” our cucumbers up with esoteric accoutrements makes them no more deleterious than anyone who simply prefer slicing them up and soaking them in heavily salted water.
        If the Cucumber Clause is revoked, then I assure you your precious scones won’t be far behind. And it will begin so innocuously and subtly, you won’t mind at first as they nibble away at them, too. Your tea, coffee or even your milk will know before you do that your scones have become so regulated, legislated and even subjected to draconian taxation that you can no longer have scones, no matter how much you lust after them. By then, it will be too late.
        Your lack of reverence for, and obvious contempt for, what should be precious to you, is more than alarming.
        It isn’t the “Rill of Bites” you slander and slur, good sir, it is the Dill of Bites.
        And Mr. Geoff, while I respect your right to “hurry up and die” as you will, rest assured the gay community won’t give a disease-ridden rat’s rectum if they can no longer employ cucumbers in their back door activities. They’ll merely substitute zucchinis, and perhaps even members of the squash variety to “fulfill” their antics, hijinks, frolicking and tomfoolery on their ventures and shenanigans up and down the Hershey Highway.
        Moreover, both of you gentlemen are obviously oblivious to the fact that the cucumber is a fruit, not a vegetable! (Think about that!)
        Let them eat eggplants! Don’t tread on my cukes!

        • This entire string of replies has me confused and shuddering, though not sure of in abject horror, or repressed mirth.
          Good job, gentlemen.

        • We all need a chuckle or a smile every now and then. Everything about guns in today’s news is just so damn depressing, and it raises the ire of every single one of us who cherish our God-given, not government-granted rights. We take every threat to the Second Amendment very personally, and very seriously. It’s a good thing to be able to grab at straws when we can to inject a little humor where we can. Spontaneous eruptions of responses like this due to a simple typographical error is one of those straws. I think that little shithead David Hogg would be downright hysterically funny if he (and his media supporters) weren’t so damn scary. That little brain dead bastard is very likely the future of this country. We’re in the fight of our lives right now, ladies and gentlemen. Not once in all my years’ sojourns on this planet have I seen the threat to liberty as great as it is right this minute. If any one of the lunatics in the Democrat party succeed in unseating Donald Trump, and if they somehow win control of both Houses of Congress, I really believe we will witness the end of the Republic.

    • I concur. The rats want 6 new SCOTUS Justices, Trump should make a more modest proposal, and nominate 2 fresh faced, Heritage Foundation & Federalist Society approved 40 year olds to the High Court.

      Doug Ginsburg was 41 years old when Reagan nominated him for SCOTUS. If not for that wicked shrew Nina Totenburg, he’d still be on the Court today, and he was much more conservative than Anthony Kennedy was. He’s 73 now, and still in good health.

  7. Trump should call them on it. Trump, “I heard the dems want more than 9 Judges on the Supreme. I like that idea. I think we should have 13, lucky number. I think I will call on the SAF org to send me some names and we will start nominating them…..”

    Heads will go pop.

  8. I vote for Mitch every time. Will again. Met him in person two years ago, and he is a good guy and has a sense of humor.

  9. These non-religious Democrats bear watching. And if religious Democrats remain as Democrats they bear watching. The non-religious are anti-Constitutional. Check definitions of positivism and legal positivism.

    • Atheism will evolve into machine worship. The dominant religions in 2100 will be Islam and Machinism.

      • Atheism isn’t a prerequisite for machine worship; people of all faiths are well on the way there. Nowadays, Facebook has more followers than even Jesus Christ.

    • To Timothy Torino

      Sorry but the exact opposite is true. The Far Right religious fanatics go so far as to boldly proclaim they want a Protestant Christian Caliphate and want to out law all other religions including the right to be agnostic or atheist. It is the Far Right Jack booted religious fanatics that are the real danger to the Constitutional rights of all citizens as it is they who want to discrimination against LGBT people, minorities , refugees, women and immigrants both legal and illegal. They long for the days of whites only drinking fountains and restaurants. They support the Gangster Criminal Republicans every election year when the Republican Criminals pull every trick in the book to take away peoples voting rights. Its going on as we speak right now in Ohio by the Republican filth that are going all out to prevent millions of democrats from voting in 2020.

      • And yet vlad is the one that openly supports the black genocide happening in America. vlad calls others racist and right wing to distract from his own fascist ideas.

        • It is not OK for you to call me a fascist just because I support black genocide and want to replace christian religion with the one true faith of goat loving. I demand you stop at once or else I will complain about you.

  10. Moscow MItch McConnell blocked Obama’s Supreme Court nominee and then this piece of filth did the same exact thing after Obama was out of office and let a Republican get nominated under the same exact circumstances. McConnell is a Criminal and the Democrats should take revenge after the elections “like hell hath no fury greater”. We Socialists are going to stack the court like it has never been stacked before and the result actually will make the courts less political with so many more justices. The more justices the more likely it will not be so blatantly partisan that has made the American people lose all faith in the Supreme Court.

    • Stack ’em up! I daresay when the number approaches 50 or so they’ll be completely nonpartisan…just like the Senate.

      • And one more thing you think it is voter fraud just because all of the dead people vote democrat it is not voter fraud because all of the dead people really do want the Hairy Kameltow to be president. You are just jealous because voting is patriotic and democrats who vote two or three times are twice or three times more patriotic than you.

    • Won’t ever happen. TrumpenReich is coming this fall. Operations Jade Helm 19, sage agave 12, crimson 7, and fruit basket 9 are all going exactly according to plan. There’s already 109,009 Russian soldiers in Colorado building concentration camps for liberals like you. Then the radioactive wall be built.

    • Merrick (squish) Garland would have had to have had a hearing to be blocked. It’s called “no power.” Maybe your Mom will bring down clean sheets for you.

  12. Okay. Mitch, Trump, and Crenshaw are still poised to gut the 2A this month. You can applaud if they shoot it all down and send the Democrats away with nothing.

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