Gun Owners of America Press Release

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: Ellie McDaniel
December 9, 2002
(703)321-8585

The Ninth Circuit Court Just Doesn’t Get It, GOA Says

(Springfield, VA) — Gun Owners of America took issue with last week’s
Federal
Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals decision which upheld the
constitutionality of
the California state ban on certain semi-automatic rifles and shotguns.
In
reaching its decision, the court peddled the mistaken notion that the
Second
Amendment only applies to the collective right of states to have a
militia.

“What a farce,” said GOA Executive Director Larry Pratt. “The judges
failed
to get anything right in this recent gun decision.

“The judges tried to list the legitimate uses of firearms, but then
failed to
even mention self-defense,” Pratt said. “They overlooked the fact that
Korean
merchants used semi-automatic firearms — many of which are now banned
in
California — to successfully defend their stores during the Los Angeles

riots.

“The Court also ignored several U.S. Supreme Court decisions which have
adopted the individual rights view,” Pratt noted, “including decisions
ranging
from before the Civil War to others as recent as the U.S. v.
Verdugo-Urquidez
case in 1991. In the 36 times the Supreme Court has discussed the
Second
Amendment, it has almost always treated firearms as an individual right.

“The Court is not the only branch of federal government to treat the
Second
Amendment as protecting the rights of individuals. The Fourteenth
Amendment
was designed to overturn the Jim Crow laws which were backdoor attempts
to
re-enslave the blacks.

“Opponents in Congress and the state legislatures objected to the
Fourteenth
Amendment in part because the measure would subject the states to the
Second
Amendment, thus allowing blacks to be armed. The sponsors of the
amendment
met these objections with a forceful affirmation, in effect saying:
‘That’s
what we want to achieve.’”

“The Court cited uncritically the California legislature’s finding that
the
banned guns were being prohibited because of their use in crime,” Pratt
said.
“Truth be told, these firearms are used to commit fewer murders than are

hands and feet. This has been the case for years — even before the ban
was
enacted.

“Hopefully the U.S. Supreme Court will keep with its own precedents and
throw
the Ninth Circuit’s rewrite of the Constitution into the wastebasket
where it
belongs.” Pratt concluded.

Citation: The case in question is Silveira v. Lockyer, No. 01-15098,
December
5, 2002.

-GOA-

Larry Pratt is the Executive Director for 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.