By: Teresa Mull

Anti-gun groups are giving gun owners many reasons to support the confirmation of Amy Coney Barrett, President Trump’s Supreme Court justice pick.

GPM has reported that Moms Demand Action and Everytown for Gun Safety are vehemently opposed to Barrett. Kris Brown, president of Brady United Against Gun Violence, told NPR concerning Barrett:

There’s a whole host of public safety bills and laws that we’ve had in effect for a quarter century, including the Brady background check system, that we are concerned about with her on the court.

NPR also reports UCLA law professor Adam Winkler, author of Gunfight: The Battle Over the Right to Bear Arms in America, said Barrett “…has a very expansive view of gun rights, likely one even broader than Justice Antonin Scalia.”

As a judge on the 7th US Circuit Court of Appeals, Barrett wrote in one dissent in 2019 that the court “…treats the Second Amendment as a second-class right.”

GPM reported in June of this year the U.S. Supreme Court decided not to take action on several cases dealing with the scope of the Second Amendment.

The last landmark Second Amendment decisions were District of Columbia v. Heller (2008) and McDonald v. Chicago (2010), which upheld an American citizen’s right to keep and bear arms. Since these pro-Second Amendment decisions, the court has not taken up a significant Second Amendment case again. As recently as April, the court refused to weigh in on a case regarding a New York handgun law that regulates the transportation of firearms.

Barrett’s confirmation may change all that. Gun control advocates know it, and say they have “grave concerns” about Trump’s pick.

“It seems likely that the confirmation of Judge Barrett would … open the pipeline to a flurry of cases, perhaps ranging from the constitutionality of criminal felon-in-possession statutes to large-capacity magazine bans,” said Steve Vladeck, CNN Supreme Court analyst and professor at the University of Texas School of Law.

Erich Pratt, Senior Vice President of Gun Owners of America, made the case for Barrett’s confirmation:

Moms Demand Action and Everytown’s notion that Amy Coney Barrett could strike down gun control is exactly why we need Barrett on the Court. For far too long, the Supreme Court has refused to take up cases and apply the history, text and tradition of the Second Amendment as well as the Heller and McDonald decisions. Gun owners need a pro-gun majority on the Court that will finally take up and strike down unconstitutional gun control that has been supported by anti-gun judges in the lower courts.

Teresa Mull ([email protected]) is editor of Gunpowder Magazine.

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