Trump-Appointed Judges Are Already Handing Huge Wins to the NRA – By Matt Cohern (Mother Jones) / Aug 17 2020
An influx of right-wing judges with extreme views on the Second Amendment
The future looked bright for the NRA at the end of 2016. Donald Trump had just been elected president—thanks, at least in part, to the $31 million that the gun rights group spent on the race—and rolling back a slew of firearms restrictions was a top priority for the GOP. “We have the next eight years alongside President Trump to undo the Obama transformation of America and set our country back on its rightful, righteous course of freedom,” NRA executive vice president Wayne LaPierre said in early 2017.
“There are now more judges on the lower courts and the court of appeals who take an extreme view of the Second Amendment.”
But less than two years later, the NRA fell from grace—and it fell hard. During the 2018 midterms, for the first time in recent history, gun control groups outspent the NRA, helping to usher in a new Democratic majority in the House of Representatives. And just this month, New York Attorney General Letitia James filed a groundbreaking lawsuit against the NRA, accusing it of widespread corruption and seeking to dissolve it in its entirety. But even amid these very public humiliations, the NRA has quietly—and successfully—worked to persuade Trump and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) to nominate and confirm a series of judges who who are virulently opposed to gun control laws. All the while, the group has filed an onslaught of lawsuits against state gun regulations in hopes that the newly appointed judges will overturn them.
“There are now more judges on the lower courts and the court of appeals who take an extreme view of the Second Amendment and that are hostile to most gun safety laws,” says Hannah Shearer, the litigation director for the Giffords Law Center, the legal arm of the gun control group founded by former Arizona Rep. Gabby Giffords (D). In a report released Monday, the Giffords group noted that “these judges are ultimately responsible for deciding not only if many gun safety laws are constitutional, but also for determining the relevant legal framework for making this decision in the first place.” What that means, essentially, is that these judges determine how certain gun safety laws fit into the broad interpretation of the Second Amendment that the Supreme Court established in 2008 when it ruled that the Constitution gives Americans an individual right to own a gun but also stipulated that certain restrictions were permissible.
Continue to article: https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2020/08/trump-appointed-judges-are-already-handing-huge-wins-to-the-nra/
