A Kavanaugh SCOTUS Could Expand Gun Rights - NRA Pledges $1 Million for Pro-Kavanaugh Ads

UPDATE - August 9, 2018:

• The National Rifle Association plans to spend at least $1 million on television ads supporting the confirmation of Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court. The ads will target four vulnerable Democratic senators and one key Republican.
• Based on his record, Kavanaugh strongly supports the Second Amendment right to bear arms and believes there's little room for constitutionally permissible gun control.
• The digital ads are urging voters to call their senators in Indiana, West Virginia, Alabama, and North Dakota and demanding they vote to confirm Trump's SCOTUS pick.

What do you think?

How do you want your senators voting? Hit Take Action and let them know.

—Josh Herman

Countable's original story appears below.

What’s the story?

• President Donald Trump’s nomination of judge Brett Kavanaugh to replace retiring Justice Anthony Kennedy could tip the Supreme Court against gun control laws.

"Kavanaugh believes in a very vigorous Second Amendment right to bear arms, and he thinks there is little room for constitutionally permissible gun control," UCLA law professor Adam Winkler, who has written extensively about the right to bear arms, told NPR.

Kavanaugh’s record

• In one notable dissent, Kavanaugh argued the Constitution prohibits a state from banning so-called assault weapons because they “have not traditionally been banned and are in common use by law-abiding citizens for self-defense in the home, hunting and other lawful uses.”
• The SCOTUS nominee further argued that the Second Amendment is like the First Amendment: both gun rights and free speech are guaranteed by the Constitution and should rarely be limited.

"A ban on a class of arms is not an incidental regulation," Kavanaugh wrote. "It is equivalent to a ban on a category of speech."

What gun-control activists are saying

• "Kavanaugh's basically the roadblock to anything we want happening," Charlie Mirsky, the 18-year-old political director of March for Our Lives, told NPR. "We believe that if we got anything passed, he could declare it unconstitutional. He could just block anything we want from staying in place."
• Former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s anti-gun rights group, Everytown for Gun Safety, said in a statement:

What gun-rights activists are saying

• Lawrence Keane, senior vice president and general counsel of the National Shooting Sports Foundation, the trade association for the firearms, said:

“We are confident that Judge Kavanaugh will serve our nation with distinction as an associate justice of our nation’s highest court and that he will make decisions that will serve to protect the Second Amendment and other Constitutionally guaranteed rights of law-abiding Americans.”

• Trevor Burrus, a research fellow and gun rights advocate at the libertarian Cato Institute, told NPR that he sees Kavanaugh, Clarence Thomas, and Neil Gorsuch as "the kind of gun-rights justices that you could reliably see striking down a bunch of regulations," including "10-day waiting periods, magazine restrictions, assault weapons bans, things like that."

What do you think?

The Supreme Court has heard very few gun-related cases since 2008’s D.C. v. Heller, when it upheld law-abiding citizens’ right to gun ownership while stipulating that such ownership should be regulated. Do you want Kavanaugh confirmed in the hopes he’ll loosen gun-control laws? Or do you want your senators rejecting him for the same reason? Hit Take Action and tell your reps, then share your thoughts below.

—Josh Herman

(Photo Credit: SAUL LOEB / AFP)