Biased Ruling Supporting Semiauto Ban Enabled by Sham Confirmations

“A federal judge in Chicago denied a Naperville gun store owner and other plaintiffs a temporary restraining order against the Illinois assault weapons ban,” ABC 7 Eyewitness News reported.

“Two state lawsuits … have succeeded in getting temporary restraining orders against the ban for thousands of plaintiffs,” the report notes, while pointing out a significant difference with this development. “This is the first ruling issued in federal court, and the first to deny a temporary restraining order against the ban.”

“Because assault weapons are particularly dangerous weapons and high-capacity magazines are particularly dangerous weapon accessories, their regulation accords with history and tradition,” United State District Judge Virginia M. Kendall wrote in the Memorandum Opinion and Order in Bevis v. Naperville. “Naperville and Illinois lawfully exercised their authority to control their possession, transfer, sale, and manufacture by enacting a ban on commercial sales. That decision comports with the Second Amendment…”

No, it comports with some past decisions where judges proved deliberately indifferent to “shall not be infringed” and fraudulently “legitimized” subversive legislation that did just that. If Kendall wants to talk about comporting with the Second Amendment, she’ll first need to be intellectually honest and logically consistent enough to admit “weapons of war” are precisely what “We the People” are entitled to have.

In U.S. v. Miller, the “landmark” case from 1939, the Supreme Court observed a weapon would need to have “some reasonable relationship to the preservation or efficiency of a well regulated militia [or] that this weapon is any part of the ordinary military equipment, or that its use could contribute to the common defense.”

Who but someone willfully deluding herself, a liar, or both, would deliberately ignore that the militia is comprised of citizens “capable of acting in concert for the common defense [and] bearing arms supplied by themselves and of the kind in common use at the time”? Its function was — and still is — to field citizen soldiers. And these citizens bore arms that were suitable for that purpose, “ordinary military equipment” intended to be taken into “common defense” battles. The militia did not assemble on the green bearing torches and pitchforks. They came with the intent to match and best a professional military threat.

To suggest the Framers of the Constitution meant anything else is to accuse them of being incompetent and insane, and of codifying into “the supreme Law of the Land” that sending an ill-equipped citizenry to their slaughter was “necessary to the security of a free State.”

Judge Kendall is being neither honest nor consistent in imposing her personal political biases to help swindle her countrymen out of what Continental Congress delegate Tench Coxe called their “birthright.” What makes that especially intolerable is she was nominated to the court by President George W. Bush, a Republican the National Rifle Association endorsed, apparently because he “and Vice President Cheney both love to hunt and fish.”

“They know the Constitution gives people the personal right to bear arms,” NRA Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre assured the membership.  “And, they want to pass the values of our Nation on to a new generation.”

NRA and the Brady Center both arguing over which rights the Constitution gives might help explain why the new generation finds things so confusing. You’d think at least Wayne would know better. It might also help explain why the bar for “A” ratings and endorsements is sometimes set so low.

“Kendall was confirmed by the U.S. Senate on December 21, 2005, on a Senate vote and received commission on January 3, 2006,” Ballotpedia documents. That made it during the 109^th Congress, where both the House, and more importantly the Senate since it’s the body Constitutionally authorized to advise and consent on nominees, were controlled by the Republicans.

Kendall’s sitting on the bench and making inane, unsupportable (by Founding intent) rulings, is on them. And a big part of the reason for that is nominees are traditionally given a pass on tough questions about “their views on legal or constitutional issues.”

Think of one job you’ve ever applied for where you’d have gotten it if you decided to play coy with the hiring managers. So there’s no reason, at least a legitimate one, why general principles of understanding should be off-limits. There’s no reason, again at least a legitimate one, why answers to specific questions of legal understanding and principles should not be expected.

There’s no reason to trust any politician who thinks the voters shouldn’t be informed of what a nominee’s understandings and principles are. Because until that changes, we’ll continue to have statist tools like Kendall codifying the evisceration of their countrymen’s rights from positions of power and privilege while those who put them there continue inflicting appointed despots, apparatchiks, and outright boobs on their constituents.

About David Codrea:

David Codrea is the winner of multiple journalist awards for investigating/defending the RKBA and a long-time gun owner rights advocate who defiantly challenges the folly of citizen disarmament. He blogs at “The War on Guns: Notes from the Resistance,” is a regularly featured contributor to Firearms News, and posts on Twitter: @dcodrea and Facebook.