Democrat presidential candidate Marianne Williamson, in remarks to The New Yorker, reportedly observed incredulously, “I know this sounds naïve. I didn’t think the left was so mean. I didn’t think the left lied like this.”
Somewhere, conservatives are yelling in unison, “Welcome to the party, Marianne!”
Williamson is the maverick outsider, the self-help author who acknowledges her political agenda includes slavery reparations, has had to “debunk some myths and clarify some statements,” The New Yorker reported.
That the political left might be somewhat nasty brings the discussion around to something Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell did recently, along with every other Senate Republican. They signed a letter that went to the Clerk of the U.S. Supreme Court that blasted five Democrats led by Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-Rhode Island) who submitted an amicus brief to the high court that urged dismissal of a controversial case challenging a New York City handgun law—since amended to avoid a high court ruling—or else face the possibility of the Senate, under Democrat control, packing the court.
“Democrats in Congress,” the McConnell letter states, “and on the presidential campaign trail, have peddled plans to pack this Court with more justices in order to further their radical legislative agenda.”
Will this presidential election be the most important in American history?
Into this morass has stepped the Second Amendment Foundation, which brought a landmark gun rights case to the Supreme Court in 2010 and won. That was McDonald v. City of Chicago, which not only resulted in nullification of the Windy City handgun ban, but also incorporated the Second Amendment to the states via the 14th Amendment.
SAF definitely wants the case of New York State Rifle & Pistol Club v. New York City to be heard by the court. Anti-gunners such as Whitehouse and his four Democrat colleagues—Mazie Hirono (HI), Kirsten Gillibrand (NY), Dick Durbin (IL) and Richard Blumenthal (CT)—and every gun prohibition lobbying group on the landscape desperately do not want the court to hear this case.
The law at issue was (and nobody says it won’t come back just as soon as the court decides not to consider the case) egregious enough for NYSR&PA to turn their attorneys loose. It prohibited the city’s licensed handgun owners from taking their sidearms outside the city for any reason. They couldn’t travel to compete, go hunting, simply vacation, or take a gun along for personal protection.
The Supremes, with Associate Justices Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh now on board, accepted the case for review last February. That sent New York officials scrambling to prevent a confrontation that they evidently think is going to slap down the law, and possibly be the catalyst for challenging, or even nullifying, similar municipal gun control laws all over the country.
This panic suggests that city officials responsible for the restrictive regulation have known all along it would not pass a constitutional challenge. They just don’t want the Supreme Court to make it official.
“If the court dismisses this case,” said SAF founder and Executive Vice President Alan M. Gottlieb in a news release, “there is nothing to prevent New York City from re-enacting the statute. In addition, the gun prohibition lobby is rightly concerned that a ruling against New York City could also apply to other states and cities’ infringements on Second Amendment rights.”
“We’re proud of Sen. McConnell and his colleagues,” Gottlieb added. “We have never before seen such an outrageous effort by anti-gun extremists on Capitol Hill to subvert the constitutional process. I was personally appalled by the brief. Just when you think opponents of the Second Amendment can’t sink any lower, they surprise you.”
Apparently, they might not surprise Williamson. Her remarks are being played up by Breitbart.com.
In their amicus brief, Whitehouse and his colleagues concluded, “The Supreme Court is not well. And the people know it. Perhaps the Court can heal itself before the public demands it be ‘restructured in order to reduce the influence of politics.’ Particularly on the urgent issue of gun control, a nation desperately needs it to heal.”
Gottlieb took a swipe in reaction.
“Contrary to what the Whitehouse Five contends in their brief,” he said, “the nation needs the Supreme Court to take Second Amendment cases and determine whether laws such as the one in New York are infringements, and then provide guidance to the lower courts about where the constitutional line may be drawn.”
But gun control extremists do not want that line drawn, ever. For decades, they have adopted law after law that have incrementally eroded the Second Amendment rights of millions of law-abiding citizens in jurisdictions from one coast to the other. They don’t want that to change.
Gottlieb suggested that Whitehouse and company are simply terrified that the high court is about to knock over the gun control cart, igniting a process that has become the SAF battle cry: “Winning firearms freedom one lawsuit at a time.”
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