Senator Dick Durbin thought he could trip up Amy Coney Barrett on the Second Amendment and Americans’ right to bear arms versus a citizen’s right to vote. Poor Dick Durbin didn’t know what hit him. Coney Barrett quickly destroyed him. You’ll love this.
The Democrats have been sadly mistaken about Amy Coney Barrett and the Second Amendment. Over the last two days, many Democrats have been bringing up the Kanter case, which Barrett wrote the dissent.
The Kanter case involved a man named Ricky Kanter, who was convicted as a felon for fraudulently selling shoe inserts, a non-violent offense. Barrett did the unthinkable, according to the Democrats, when she issued the dissent, saying Kanter had an “individual right” to bear arms based on the famous Heller case.
Barrett explicitly wrote: “The Second Amendment confers an individual right, intimately connected with the natural right of self-defense, and not limited to civic participation (i.e., militia service).”
Coney Barrett also made the distinction between a citizen’s right to bear arms and a citizen’s right to vote. She said both were “fundamental rights” but the right to vote found in the Fourteenth Amendment also gives states the right to abridge that vote “for participation in rebellion, or other crime.”
In other words, the right to keep and bear arms “shall not be infringed.” Voting rights have no such guarantee. So, if you are a convicted felon, states have the right to take away your voting privileges. States can also mandate voter ID laws. However, they never have the right to take away your right to bear arms.
Durbin suggested that Barrett’s opinion in Kanter showed that she saw voting rights as “secondary,” even though she had described voting rights the day before as “fundamental.”
Barrett replied:
Senator, with respect, that is distorting my position. What I said in that case, which is what Heller said, and which is conventional in all discussions of this, to my knowledge, is that the right to vote is fundamental, however it is an individual fundamental right that we possess, but we possess it as part of our civic responsibility for the common good.
And the entire dispute in Heller was that the majority thought that the Second Amendment was an individual right, and the dissent thought it was one that was a civic right, that was a right that people possess, but they possessed for the benefit of society by participation in the militia. And it is a distortion of the case to say that I ever said that voting is a second-class right.
Durbin replied: “When you were finished with your dissent, here’s what it came down to, say: if you were guilty of a felony, that is not violent, you can lose your right to vote, but you can’t lose your right to buy a gun. Am I wrong?”
Barrett pointed out that Kanter “had nothing to do with the right to vote. … I don’t have an opinion, and have never expressed one, about the scope of legislatures’ authority to take away felon voting rights.”
However, she said it would have to show evidence that a non-violent felon, or non-violent felons in general, would pose a danger to the public — and she argued that the government had not done so.
Constitutional law professor Jonathan Turley of George Washington University opined that Barrett had “landed a haymaker” on Durbin in her response about the judicial canon.
Amy Coney Barrett had round two with Dick Durbin, and she once again utterly destroyed him:
Sen. Durbin tried to distort Judge Barrett's position on voting rights through her dissent in Kanter v. Barr.
Judge Barrett: "It is a distortion of the case to say that I ever said that voting is a second class right…Kanter had nothing to do with the right to vote." pic.twitter.com/gKXdnIlMnb
— Townhall.com (@townhallcom) October 14, 2020
“OH DAMN ACB JUST LEVELED DURBIN,” tweeted “RBe.”
OH DAMN ACB JUST LEVELED DURBIN.
— RBe (@RBPundit) October 14, 2020
“A list of the BS that Amy Barrett will be tolerating from Dick Durbin this morning,” tweeted Alexandra DeSanctis.
a list of the BS that Amy Barrett will be tolerating from Dick Durbin this morning pic.twitter.com/ysMyHNQvxq
— Alexandra DeSanctis (@xan_desanctis) October 14, 2020
Amy Coney Barrett knows her stuff, and these Democrats are mere amateurs when it comes to the Constitution.
Coney Barrett’s emphasis on the right of self-defense not only harkens to the Heller decision but to McDonald v. Chicago (2010), too. After all, Justice Samuel Alito, writing the majority opinion for McDonald, noted, “Individual self-defense is ‘the central component’ of the 2nd Amendment right.”
The other problem the Democrats have has to do with the upcoming election. Amy Coney Barrett clearly isn’t going to find as a Supreme Court Justice that mail-in ballots with any hint of fraud, like no signature, etc, are legal and should be counted. The Democrats look like fools trying to trip her up, and Amy Coney Barrett, also now known as ACB, is going to be a true legend on the Supreme Court.
