Remember Justice Scalia this November – If Barack Obama and those like him fail in their goal of “fundamentally transforming the United States of America,” it will be in large part because of United States Supreme Court Senior Associate Justice Antonin Gregory Scalia. Sadly, Justice Scalia passed away over the weekend. Since his nomination to the Court by President Ronald Reagan in 1986, Justice Scalia championed the view that the U.S. Constitution should be interpreted according to the intent of those who wrote it, not according to shifting social conventions or judicial preferences. The Constitution, Justice Scalia once said, “means today not what current society, much less the court, thinks it ought to mean, but what it meant when it was adopted.” As William Murchison of the Dallas Morning News wrote on Tuesday, Scalia’s understanding of the constitution “came from his respect for the wisdom of the document, which was tailored to preserve freedom.”
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| Longtime U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, a stalwart defender of the U.S. Constitution and author of the critically important majority opinion in the District of Columbia v. Heller case, passed away on Feb. 13 at the age of 79. When Justice Elena Kagan was dean of Harvard Law School, she explained Justice Scalia’s monumental influence: “His views on textualism and originalism, his views on the role of judges in our society, on the practice of judging, have really transformed the terms of legal debate in this country.” In short, “He is the justice who has had the most important impact over the years on how we think and talk about law.” |
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| Remember a year ago – February 13, 2015, to be precise – when the Obama administration presented a convoluted rationale by which M855, the second most popular variety of ammunition used in the nation’s most popular rifle, was to be banned? At the time, Obama’s White House spokesman said that banning M855 would be a “common sense step” about which “everyone should agree.” Banning the ammunition would mean “greater gun safety,” proclaimed the New York Times. Failure to ban it would be “untenable” and “preposterous,” pontificated the Washington Post. Or, as the Los Angeles Times put it, “another loss for public safety.” |
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NEWS
Band Member Targeted in Paris Terror Attacks Stresses Importance of Armed Self-Defense |
| On Tuesday, heavy metal rock group Eagles of Death Metal made a triumphant return to Paris. The American band performed before a sold-out crowd at the city’s Olympia music hall only three months after terrorist gunmen attacked an Eagles of Death Metal concert at the Bataclan theater, killing 89. By all accounts the concert was an enormous success, but even before the band took the stage, Eagles of Death Metal frontman Jesse Hughes made international headlines with his impassioned statements on behalf of the right to armed self-defense. |
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| As we have reported several times in the past (including here and here), the Veterans Administration (VA) has been reporting to the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) the identities of its beneficiaries who have been assigned a “fiduciary” to manage their benefits. The VA claims that such determinations constitute an “adjudication of mental defectiveness” under federal law, thereby prohibiting the beneficiary (presumptively for life) from acquiring or possessing firearms. The NRA has for several years been supporting legislation to correct this unjustified infringement on Second Amendment rights, including the Veterans 2nd Amendment Protection Act (H.R. 2001, Rep. Jeff Miller, R-FL) and the Mental Health and Safe Communities Act of 2015 (S. 2002, Sen. John Cornyn, R-TX). |
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| Billionaire Michael Bloomberg is in a spending freefall attacking our gun rights all across the U.S., on multiple fronts…in Congress, in state legislatures, and on the airwaves. Further, he’s gathering signatures and pouring money into anti-freedom ballot initiatives in states like WA, NV ME, and AZ. In the ’15 VA elections, he spent more than $2 million on a couple of state senate races! If he’s willing to invest that much in VA alone, imagine how much of his BILLIONS he will spend in ’16 all across the nation! |
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| In this News Minute from the NRA Institute for Legislative Action, Jennifer Zahrn reports that the passing of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia marks a turning point for the Second Amendment. |
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| STATE GRASSROOTS ROUND-UP |
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