One Can Only Hope

A Washington Times editorial expressed the concerns gun owners should have about Elena Kagan.

We've been down this road before. Less than a year ago, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick J. Leahy, Vermont Democrat, made similar assurances regarding then-Supreme Court hopeful Sonia Sotomayor, saying, "I do not see how any fair observer could regard her testimony as hostile to the Second Amendment personal right to bear arms, a right she has embraced and recognizes."

Once the "wise Latina" donned the robes of her lifetime office, any pretense of upholding the individual's right to bear arms was jettisoned. Ms. Sotomayor signed onto the gun rights dissent of Justice Stephen G. Breyer last month, which stated, "I can find nothing in the Second Amendment's text, history or underlying rationale that could warrant characterizing it as 'fundamental' insofar as it seeks to protect the keeping and bearing of arms for private self-defense purposes."

There's reason to think Ms. Kagan will follow the same path.

What's your opinion? Is Kagan going to be another Sotomayor, as concerns gun rights?

And how about that Justice Breyer? Can he write, or what?

"I can find nothing in the Second Amendment's text, history or underlying rationale that could warrant characterizing it as 'fundamental' insofar as it seeks to protect the keeping and bearing of arms for private self-defense purposes."

Please leave a comment.

Soldier of Fortune on Kagan

Soldier of Fortune sounds off on Elena Kagan.

So it is more than a little interesting that Barack Qbama has reached into his closet of political leftists to bring out Elena Kagan — a woman whose legal views have been shaped by the most extreme socialist voices in Washington.

Did you get that: "shaped by the most extreme socialist voices in Washington?"

Kagan doesn’t have a record of judicial opinions. She hasn’t been a judge. So the crafty Obama figures that, without a paper trail, we won’t know of the ways she is moving American jurisprudence to the left until it’s too late.

Did you get that: "the crafty Obama?"

Kagan was also part of the Clinton team that pushed the firearms industry to include gun locks with all gun purchases and was in the Clinton administration when the president pushed legislation that would close down gun shows.

How about this one: "pushed legislation that would close down gun shows?"

President Obama has made it very clear that he expects Kagan’s “powers of persuasion” to make her and Justice Anthony Kennedy the swing votes to uphold his anti-gun ObamaCare legislation.

And this: "President Obama has made it very clear."

Kagan, like the President who nominated her, is an extreme leftist. According to WeeklyStandard.com (May 6, 2009), she is so far to the left she has lamented that socialism has “never attained the status of a major political force” in our country.

And finally, this: "Kagan, like the President who nominated her, is an extreme leftist."

What's your opinion? Do you think the Soldier of Fortune writer likes to exaggerate a little? Or do you find these descriptions accurate?

Please leave a comment.

Kagan on Gun Rights

Businessweek published an article about what may very well be the only tangible evidence of Elena Kagan's stance on the 2nd Amendment.

Elena Kagan said as a U.S. Supreme Court law clerk in 1987 that she was “not sympathetic” toward a man who contended that his constitutional rights were violated when he was convicted for carrying an unlicensed pistol.

Kagan, whom President Barack Obama nominated to the high court this week, made the comment to Justice Thurgood Marshall, urging him in a one-paragraph memo to vote against hearing the District of Columbia man’s appeal.

The man’s “sole contention is that the District of Columbia’s firearms statutes violate his constitutional right to ‘keep and bear arms,’” Kagan wrote. “I’m not sympathetic.”

I'm sure that's enough for the gun folks to fear her, but is it really all that worrisome? Isn't a 2nd Amendment argument by a criminal illegally in possession of a gun weak at best? Do gun rights people demand total loyalty to the 2nd Amendment, even applying it to situations like this?

I've got an idea, maybe someone should research Ms. Kagan's high school diaries. She might have made some disparaging remarks about guns in them, which would indicate how she really feels.

What do you think?