Is Brett Kavanaugh Really a Second Amendment Warrior?

By Ready to Fire News On Sep 10, 2018

Expanding gun rights in America has been on President Donald Trump’s agenda since before he took office. With yet another open position on the nation’s highest court, Republicans are now poised to make a long-term shift that can act as a powerful check against unconstitutional gun control legislation.

With Senate hearings underway for Judge Brett Kavanaugh, President Trump’s pick for the Supreme Court seat, there’s a strong possibility that his views shift the narrative around guns.

There have only been a few memorable cases about gun rights that have made it to the Supreme Court. One of the most recent was the 2008 ruling in District of Columbia v. Heller, where the Second Amendment rights were interpreted to protect the rights of individuals to bear arms. Previous cases have been focused around the collective right to bear arms, which is a much broader conversation. The original decision refuted a Washington, D.C. law that was a ban on semiautomatic rifles, and required that buyers be registered. Weapons with a magazine that held more than 10 rounds were also banned.

In a dissenting opinion to the Heller case, Kavanaugh wrote a dissent for the District of Columbia US Court of Appeals. He called upon the laws to be weighed based upon “text, history and tradition” and “by appropriate analogues thereto when dealing with modern weapons and new circumstances”. This is particularly important considering that the many modern weapons were not yet in existence with the Second Amendment was put into place. This direction ultimately resulted in an argument that some registration requirements were unconstitutional at their roots, because these weapons were not traditionally banned and had lawful uses by individuals.

While the far left likes to argue the usage and availability of semiautomatic weapons, Judge Kavanaugh notes that the majority of handguns are technically semiautomatic. Rifles with similar characteristics are widely owned by Americans and have been for many years — long before the recent string of high-profile mass shootings captured the media’s attention. It is true that AR-15-type weapons are often used in mass shootings. However, the majority of those weapons were not procured by legal means, meaning that additional laws would not have prevented them from obtaining the weapons used in the shootings. These rifles are most often used by law-abiding citizens in the protection of their home, hunting and family.

The heart of Kavanaugh’s argument for Second Amendment rights is a common sense, conservative approach that maintains the validity of many current laws while reducing the need to introduce additional legislation to limit the ability of Americans to own firearms. As he gets closer to donning the robes of a Supreme Court Justice, Brett Kavanaugh has the full support of many public gun rights advocates.

~ Ready to Fire News