June 21, 2010

NSSF Increasingly Concerned about Supreme Court Nominee

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Following the release of documents from the Clinton library last week in which it appears United States Supreme Court Nominee Elena Kagan equated the National Rifle Association (NRA) to the Ku Klux Klan (KKK), NSSF has become increasingly concerned about the nominee’s views on firearms issues and her temperament to serve on the high court. The White House has subsequently denied the charge, which appeared in National Review Magazine; however, even if Ms. Kagan did not intend to directly equate the NRA to the KKK, she did undeniably list the NRA as a "bad guy” organization.

What is becoming increasingly clear, including considering other earlier-released documents, is that Nominee Kagan appears to have been in the thick of anti-gun policy discussions during the Clinton administration and was in fact hostile to the view that the Second Amendment protects an individual constitutional right to keep and bear arms.  This might explain, in part, why she would seemingly equate the premier civil rights organization fighting to protect and defend the individual right to keep and bear arms to a group, the KKK, that seeks to suppress the constitutionally protected civil rights of minorities.  That her view on the Second Amendment was so wrong during her days clerking for Justice Thurgood Marshall, in light of the history detailed by the Supreme Court decision in the Heller case, raises more questions for us about her qualifications and temperament.  Even the NY Times on Saturday described her as "a savvy, sharp-elbowed and sometimes salty-tongued lawyer at ease with politics, policy and bureaucratic infighting.”

NSSF will be closely monitoring the nominee's responses on these issues during the Senate Judiciary Committee confirmation hearings this summer.

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