Sonia Sotomayor may be as wooden as Al Gore and more prone to spoonerisms than George Bush, but even I have to admit that she is fundamentally clueless about the 2nd Amendment.
In answer to a question from Senator Leahy … Well, let’s have a shortened version of the pandering exchange:
LEAHY: Thank you. And in the Second Circuit decision, Maloney v. Cuomo, you, in fact, recognized the Supreme Court decided in Heller that the personal right to bear arms is guaranteed by the Second Amendment of the Constitution against federal law restrictions. Is that correct?
SOTOMAYOR: It is.
LEAHY: … We all know that not every constitutional right has been applied to the states by the Supreme Court. I know one of my very first cases as a prosecutor was a question of whether the Fifth Amendment guaranteed a grand jury indictment has been made applicable to the states. [?] The Supreme Court has not held that applicable to the states.
Seventh Amendment right to jury trial, Eighth Amendment prohibition against excessive fines, these have not been made applicable to the states. … but would you have an open mind, as — on the Supreme Court, in evaluating that, the legal proposition of whether the Second Amendment right should be considered fundamental rights and thus applicable to the states?
SOTOMAYOR: Like you, I understand that how important the right to bear arms is to many, many Americans. In fact, one of my godchildren is a member of the NRA. And I have friends who hunt. I understand the individual right fully that the Supreme Court recognized in Heller.
She acknowledges that many Americans think the right to bear arms is important. Someone she knows belongs to the NRA. She has friends who hunt. There’s nothing in her answer that actually acknowledges we have a 2nd Amendment.
Let’s walk through it. Indeed, the 2nd Amendment does not grant the right to keep and bear arms. The 2nd Amendment merely recognizes a right that existed before the Constitution was a gleam in James Madison’s eye.
Ms Sotomayor’s understanding that the right to bear arms is important to many Americans is as irrelevant as it is ignorant. Many Americans would like to have Nationalized health care, but that does not make it a Constitutional right. If no Americans considered the right to keep and bear arms important it would still be their right.
One of her godchildren is a member of the NRA? Perhaps this is very indirect evidence of the empathy she would apply to any decision before SCOTUS involving her godchild’s rights under the 1st Amendment, but I doubt it.
She has friends who hunt? That must be in an Amendment I missed, because the 2nd Amendment has nothing whatever to do with hunting. That idea is a far-left-wing trope, invented in an attempt to lose fewer votes when trashing the 2nd Amendment.
The 2nd Amendment is about the right to self defense. The Founders assumed you have the natural right to defend yourself against individuals who would harm you and against a government that would steal your liberty. The 2nd Amendment does no more, or less, than acknowledge that you have this right, independent of the Constitution.