Gun Rights Leaders Join in Opposition to Sotomayor Confirmation

BELLEVUE, Wash., July 7 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Several of the nation's
leading gun rights activists, including the heads of the Citizens Committee
for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms and Second Amendment Foundation, today
joined to oppose the confirmation of Judge Sonia Sotomayor as an associate
justice on the U.S. Supreme Court.

"It is extremely important that a Supreme Court justice understand and
appreciate the origin and meaning of the Second Amendment, a constitutional
guarantee permanently enshrined in the Bill of Rights," said a letter from the
group, which was hand-delivered to every member of the U.S. Senate. "Judge
Sotomayor's record on the Second Amendment causes us grave concern about her
treatment of this enumerated Constitutional right."

Included among the signators were Sandra S. Froman, former president of the
National Rifle Association; Alan M. Gottlieb, CCRKBA chairman; Joseph Tartaro,
SAF president; Gene Hoffman, chairman of the CalGUNS Foundation; several
current or former NRA directors; Robert Corbin, former Arizona attorney
general and past NRA president; former Congressman Bob Barr; Jim Wallace,
executive director of the Gun Owners' Action League in Massachusetts; John T.
Lee, president of the Pennsylvania Rifle and Pistol Association; Tom King,
president of the New York State Rifle and Pistol Association; Robert E.
Sanders, former assistant director of law enforcement for the federal Bureau
of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, and several others, 25 in all.

"The Supreme Court is almost certain to decide next year whether the Second
Amendment applies to states and local governments, as it does to the federal
government," they wrote. "While on the Second Circuit, Judge Sotomayor
revealed her views on the right to keep and bear arms in Maloney v. Cuomo, a
case decided after Heller, yet holding that the Second Amendment is not a
fundamental right, that it does not apply to the states, and that if an object
is 'designed primarily as a weapon' that is a sufficient basis for total
prohibition even within the home. Earlier in a 2004 case, United States v.
Sanchez-Villar, Sotomayor and two colleagues perfunctorily dismissed a Second
Amendment claim holding that 'the right to possess a gun is clearly not a
fundamental right.' Imagine if such a view were expressed about other
fundamental rights guaranteed by the Bill of Rights, such as the First, Fourth
and Fifth Amendments."

"We joined in this effort," Gottlieb said, "because our nation stands at a
point in history where we either defend all civil rights, or begin to
surrender them one by one until none are left. It would be unconscionable to
stand silently as the Senate deliberates confirmation of a new associate
justice with such evident disregard for a key tenet, if not the critical
element, of the Bill of Rights."

"The Second Amendment survives today by a single vote in the Supreme Court,"
the letter notes. "Judge Sotomayor has already revealed her views on the right
to keep and bear arms and we believe they are contrary to the intent and
purposes of the Second Amendment and Bill of Rights."

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