6/27/05 Supreme Court Decision Ultimately Threatens Gun Owners, All Americans

Supreme Court Decision Ultimately Threatens Gun Owners, All Americans

For Immediate Release
June 27, 2005
Contact: Tim Stone
703-321-8585

(Springfield, VA) — The recent 5-4 ruling by the Supreme Court legislating away property rights in the United States should give pause to all gun owners, as well as all Americans.

“The Court’s decision last week allowing governments to take an owner’s private property to give it to another user who pays higher taxes is quite simply a theft,” said GOA Executive Director Larry Pratt. “The Court’s decision is an outrageous attack on the Fifth Amendment. But this comes as no surprise to gun owners.

“Gun owners have been telling the country for years that the courts are out of control and view the Constitution with contempt,” Pratt said. “Judges have told me to my face that my constitutional arguments could not prevail because court rulings went counter to what I had shown to be the clear meaning of the Constitution. Judges believe that they are above the law!

“Do we really think we will remain immune from such tyrants?,” Pratt asked. “Already, at various times, six of the nine justices have said that U.S. law should conform to foreign law — especially European law and UN treaties. How long until our gun laws are made to conform to say, England’s, where they have an almost total gun ban? If the U.S. Constitution is no longer a protection against government, disarmament and tyranny are simply details to be worked out.”

Pratt has suggested that to save our gun rights, indeed, to save all of our freedoms, the time has come to bring the courts back under control. States need to study the history of nullification.

During the presidency of John Adams, the Sedition Act was passed — a law that essentially punished newspaper writers for criticizing federal officials. Virginia and Kentucky issued stinging rebukes to the backers of this legislation in 1798 and threatened to nullify the law within the borders of their states if Congress did not repeal the unconstitutional ban on free speech.

Later, some 22 states passed laws nullifying the Fugitive Slave Act following the Supreme Court’s Dred Scott decision which upheld it. It became impossible for federal marshals to apprehend and return escaped slaves in the north to their southern masters, in spite of federal law.

“The states and Congress need to do their part to rein in the judges,” Pratt said. “In the words of the defenders of freedom on Flight 93, ‘Let’s roll.'”

— GOA —

Larry Pratt is the Executive Director of Gun Owners of America, a national gun lobby with over 300,000 members located at 8001 Forbes Place, Springfield, VA 22151 and at http://www.gunowners.org on the web.

Either Larry Pratt or another GOA spokesman is available for press interviews.