Obama's Court Nomination Validates America's Rush to Buy Firearms

BELLEVUE, Wash., May 27 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- President Barack Obama's
nomination of Judge Sonia Sotomayor to replace retiring Justice David Souter
on the U.S. Supreme Court validates the concerns of millions of American
citizens who have been rushing to gun shops for the past seven months, fearing
their Second Amendment rights are in jeopardy, the Citizens Committee for the
Right to Keep and Bear Arms said today.

Judge Sotomayor was part of a Second Circuit Court panel that ruled in January
that the Second Amendment does not apply to the states, in Maloney v. Cuomo.
That is in direct conflict with a Ninth Circuit opinion earlier this spring in
Nordyke v. King that the Second Amendment is incorporated to the states, and
therefore does place limits on states' ability to regulate the individual
right to keep and bear arms.

"Starting literally last Nov. 4 and every day since," noted CCRKBA Chairman
Alan Gottlieb, "concerned Americans, many who had never before owned a
firearm, have been crowding into gun shops. Their concerns that the Obama
administration may somehow try to destroy Second Amendment rights have
certainly been affirmed with the nomination of Judge Sotomayor to the Supreme
Court.

"Sure, Congress has turned a cold shoulder to renewal of the ban on
semiautomatic sporting rifles," he continued, "and the president did sign the
guns-in-parks bill, but only because he had to in order to save his credit
card legislation.

"But a Supreme Court justice is a president's legacy," Gottlieb observed.
"Judge Sotomayor would become a justice for life, and her anti-Second
Amendment position would continue affecting her decisions long after Obama is
gone from the White House.

"A Supreme Court nominee's philosophy generally reflects the philosophy of the
president that nominates them," Gottlieb concluded. "Judge Sotomayor's
position on the Second Amendment is a clear signal that Mr. Obama's claim that
he supports gun rights is nothing but lip service from a man who consistently
argued and voted against those rights in the Illinois Senate and the U.S.
Senate. American gun owners have every reason to oppose this nomination, and
let their senators know why."

With more than 650,000 members and supporters nationwide, the Citizens
Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms (www.ccrkba.org) is one of the
nation's premier gun rights organizations. As a non-profit organization, the
Citizens Committee is dedicated to preserving firearms freedoms through active
lobbying of elected officials and facilitating grass-roots organization of gun
rights activists in local communities throughout the United States.

SOURCE Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms

Alan Gottlieb of the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms,
+1-425-454-4911