On 9 September, 2020 in an interview on the Shawn Hannity show on Fox news.com, President Trump made a bold assertion. He said if he were not in office, the Second Amendment would have become essentially meaningless, because of the different judges who would have been appointed. From the transcript:
And also, Supreme Court judges or justices.
And you -- the whole country, it depends on these decisions, which way you go, whether you have a Second Amendment or not. I mean, the Second Amendment would be under siege.
If I wasn't here, you wouldn't have a Second Amendment right now. You wouldn't have a right to guns. You would -- whether you had it or it was just almost totally obliterated, but it would be in a very different form than you have right now.
I've kept it totally as it was, and it's, you know, something I'm very proud of, and people -- I think it's a real voting issue, Second Amendment.
Life, you look at that. So these judges are going to be making massive decisions. And the next president is going to get one, two, three, or four justices of the Supreme Court.
The President is correct in his statement. If Hillary would have become President, the Second Amendment in the bill of rights would have been interpreted out of any significance. We already have several circuit courts who are working hard to interpret the Second Amendment as of little consequence. If a President Hillary would have appointed replacements for Justice Scalia and Kennedy, the ten Second Amendment cases the Supreme Court has refused to hear, would have been granted writs of certiorari at the Supreme Court. Second Amendment supporters would not have liked the results.
Very likely, the Supreme Court would have confirmed the Second Amendment does not apply outside the home; that bans on semi-automatic rifles are permissible; that ammunition bans are permissible; that bans on magazines are permissible; that not all commonly available handguns are protected by the Second Amendment, or, they may be covered by the Second Amendment, but the state can still regulate them out of existence.
The ban on butterfly knives in a Hawaii District Court, or the ban on semi-automatic rifles and magazines with a capacity over 10 rounds in the New York Rifle and Pistol Association, are templates for that "interpretation" of a toothless Second Amendment.
President Trump has appointed over 200 judges to the lower federal courts. Without Trump appointees, it is likely the three judge panel on the Ninth Circuit would have held the California magazine ban to be constitutional.
President Trump has appointed ten judges to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. The Ninth Circuit has 29 active judges.
President Trump is correct in saying that next to war and peace, the appointment of federal judges is the most consequential act a president can perform. President Trump has been appointing judges who respect the Constitution as written.
President Trump has done better in this regard than any other president since Calvin Coolidge. It is one of the reasons the Left in this country fear him so much. The judges he is appointing are showing a willingness to reverse decades of unconstitutional decisions by Progressive judges who have worked hard to undermine the Constitution and the rule of law.
©2020 by Dean Weingarten: Permission to share is granted when this notice and link are included.
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The fight over the 2nd Amendment is going to end one of two ways, either the US Supreme Court finally rules all gun control laws un-Constitutional, or a second civil war. I hope for the former, but fear it will be the latter.
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