By Dave Workman | Editor-in-Chief
As the Senate Judiciary Committee started grilling Judge Amy Coney Barrett during the second day of hearings on her Supreme Court nomination, Fox News was reporting that murders in Chicago have jumped more than 200 over the same period last year, and there are still more than two full months before the year ends.
She confirmed to Chairman Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) that her family owns a gun, but she assured the committee this would not have any impact on how she decides on Second Amendment cases.
Tough questioning began the day after Judge Barrett, who now sits on the Seventh U.S. Court of Appeals, listened to opening remarks and made her own statement. It was clear from the outset that Democrats on the committee decided from the outset to cast doubt on her ability to make rulings on abortion, health care and gun rights due to her Catholicism and conservatism.
On the Second Amendment, Judge Barrett has a thin record, but according to Ilya Shapiro, director of the Robert A. Levy Center for Constitutional Studies, “Judge Barrett, unlike many of her colleagues on the circuit courts, takes the Second Amendment seriously, using the text, structure, and history of the Constitution to understand and apply the rights protected.” Shapiro, publisher of the Cato Supreme Court Review, was quoted by Fox News.
Ranking member Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) promised Democrats will challenge Judge Barrett on Obamacare and other issues.
In a separate report, Fox News identified issues that worry Democrats. They include the Affordable Care Act, abortion rights and “gun issues.”
“The bottom line is,” said a Fox report, “Democrats need to tread lightly. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., has the support of Republicans to move forward with the confirmation process and confirm Barrett on the Senate floor before Nov. 3, barring any development in her vetting. Democrats don’t want to create a ‘Barrett effect’ and lose their chance of winning a Senate majority in 2020.”
During her opening statement, Judge Barrett recalled her days as a law clerk for the late Associate Justice Antonin Scalia, and stressed “Courts have a vital responsibility to enforce the rule of law, which is critical to a free society. But courts are not designed to solve every problem or right every wrong in our public life. The policy decisions and value judgments of government must be made by the political branches elected by and accountable to the People. The public should not expect courts to do so, and courts should not try.
“That is the approach I have strived to follow as a judge on the Seventh Circuit,” she said.
“In every case,” Judge Barrett stated, “I have carefully considered the arguments presented by the parties, discussed the issues with my colleagues on the court, and done my utmost to reach the result required by the law, whatever my own preferences might be. I try to remain mindful that, while my court decides thousands of cases a year, each case is the most important one to the parties involved. After all, cases are not like statutes, which are often named for their authors. Cases are named for the parties who stand to gain or lose in the real world, often through their liberty or livelihood.”
As this was unfolding, Fox News reported on the Chicago mayhem. According to Chicago Police Department data as of Oct. 4 that listed 596 homicides, but since that time, there have been more slayings and the Chicago Tribune is now reporting 605 slayings.
WMAQ News reported this past weekend there were four more murders and at least 41 people were wounded in the Windy City. The murder total in Chicago, as TGM has previously reported, exceeds that of most entire states. Only a handful of states post more annual murders than just Chicago.
Chicago police data says there were 397 murders in the city last year. In 2018, Chicago logged 446 killings. During the previous year, Chicago posted 530 homicides and in 2016, there were 565 slayings. That puts Chicago already ahead of the past four years in terms of body count.
By no small coincidence, Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL) challenged Judge Barrett’s reasoning in her dissent in the case of Kanter v. Barr, a Second Amendment case in which Kanter, a convicted felon from Wisconsin, contended his crime shouldn’t disqualify him from owning a firearm. Chicago is in the Seventh Circuit, and Judge Barrett sits on that circuit.
Durbin intimated Judge Barrett might have a wrong view of the right to keep and bear arms, and about denying that right forever to convicted felons.
Subsequently, Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) came to her aid, allowing her the opportunity to explain her position.
In her dissent in the Kanter case, Judge Barrett wrote, “While scholars have not identified eighteenth or nineteenth century laws depriving felons of the right to bear arms, history does show that felons could be disqualified from exercising certain rights—like the rights to vote and serve on juries—because these rights belonged only to virtuous citizens.”
“History is consistent with common sense: it demonstrates that legislatures have the power to prohibit dangerous people from possessing guns,” she wrote. “But that power extends only to people who are dangerous. Founding-era legislatures did not strip felons of the right to bear arms simply because of their status as felons. Nor have the parties introduced any evidence that founding-era legislatures imposed virtue-based restrictions on the right; such restrictions applied to civic rights like voting and jury service, not to individual rights like the right to possess a gun. In 1791—and for well more than a century afterward— legislatures disqualified categories of people from the right to bear arms only when they judged that doing so was necessary to protect the public safety.”
However, in the next paragraph, Judge Barrett wrote, “Neither Wisconsin nor the United States has introduced data sufficient to show that disarming all nonviolent felons substantially advances its interest in keeping the public safe. Nor have they otherwise demonstrated that Kanter himself shows a proclivity for violence. Absent evidence that he either belongs to a dangerous category or bears individual markers of risk, permanently disqualifying Kanter from possessing a gun violates the Second Amendment.”
As reported by the Associated Press via the Seattle P-I.com, “Senate Democrats branded Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett a threat to Americans’ health care during the coronavirus pandemic Monday at the start of a fast-tracked hearing…”
As reported by the Associated Press, “Barring a dramatic development, Republicans appear to have the votes to confirm Barrett to a lifetime seat on the Supreme Court. If she is confirmed quickly she could be on the Supreme Court when it hears the latest challenge to the Affordable Care Act, a week after the election.”
