AG Ashcroft Confirms
Second Amendment
Protects Individual Right
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"...[L]et me state
unequivocally... the Second Amendment clearly protect(s) the
right of individuals to keep and bear firearms..." |
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-- Attorney General John Ashcroft |
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Attorney General John Ashcroft |
Last Saturday, during the Meeting of Members at NRA's 130th
Annual Meetings & Exhibits in Kansas City, Mo., NRA-ILA Executive
Director James Jay Baker read from a May 17, 2001, letter from
U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft that spelled out the AG's
views on the Second Amendment.
Ashcroft wrote, "[L]et me state
unequivocally....the Second Amendment clearly protect(s) the
right of individuals to keep and bear firearms."
The letter was
sent to Baker in reply to a query made by NRA-ILA in April, and
marks a decided reversal from the days of the Clinton/Reno
Department of Justice (DOJ). Under Clinton, the Office of the
Solicitor General, the federal government's top lawyer, wrote in
a letter to an NRA member, "there is no personal constitutional
right, under the Second Amendment, to own or use a gun."
Ashcroft's letter continued, saying, "While some have argued that
the Second Amendment guarantees only a ‘collective' right of the
States to maintain militias, I believe the Amendment's plain
meaning and original intent prove otherwise. Like the First and
Fourth Amendments, the Second Amendment protects the rights of
‘the people,' which the Supreme Court has noted is a term of art
that should be interpreted consistently throughout the Bill of
Rights."
Please feel free to contact Attorney General Ashcroft
and thank him for his public support of our Right to Keep and
Bear Arms. You can write:
U.S. Department of Justice
950
Pennsylvania Avenue, NW
Washington, DC 20530-0001.
You can also
send e-mail to AskDOJ@usdoj.gov.
Of course, the letter from Ashcroft has sent tremors through the
anti-gun lobby. The gun-ban extremists at the Violence Policy
Center (VPC) put out a release on Ashcroft that seems to openly
question his honesty and integrity, simply because he understands
that the Second Amendment protects an individual right - as did the
Coalition to Stop Gun Violence (originally founded as the
National Coalition to Ban Handguns).
Meanwhile, the Center to
Prevent Handgun Violence (CPHV) - the "educational" arm of the
gun-ban lobby, HCI - continued to dismiss the vast body of evidence
that supports the fact that the Second Amendment protects an
individual right and questioned AG Ashcroft's understanding of
constitutional law.
Ignoring court precedents, historical
research, law review articles, and the writings of our Founding
Fathers that clearly support Ashcroft's view, CPHV's Dennis
Henigan claimed, "[T]he Second Amendment refers only to the use
of arms by an organized state militia." This inability of CPHV to
either understand or acknowledge the true meaning of the Second
Amendment is not surprising - CPHV's core agenda is to subvert the
constitutional separation of powers.
CPHV, you see, is one of the
principal actors in the crusade to bankrupt lawful gun makers
with reckless, harassing lawsuits because its anti-gun agenda
continues to be rejected. As CPHV-supported suits continue to be
thrown out of court, perhaps Henigan and his followers will
finally learn s the legislatures that write the laws, not the
courts.
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