2nd AMENDMENT (2)

There is no more reason to believe Elena Kagan’s testimony on gun rights than there was to believe Sonia Sotomayor’s testimony during her Supreme Court confirmation hearings. That’s why I maintain that with one more Supreme Court appointment by Obama, the most anti-gun president ever, we can kiss our gun rights away.
　
From The New York Times: When Senator Dianne Feinstein, Democrat of California, demanded to know why Ms. Kagan had described two recent Supreme Court 5-to-4 rulings in favor of gun rights as "settled law," Ms. Kagan kept her answer simple. "Because the court decided them as they did," she said. "And once the court has decided a case, it is binding precedent." She later described the rulings [Washington D.C. vs. Heller and McDonald vs. The City of Chicago] as "settled law, entitled to all the weight precedent usually gets."
　
However, gun owners CANNOT take any comfort in Kagan’s testimony. I, for one, would not bet the farm on her "settled law" pronouncement. All you have to do is look at Sonia Sotomayor’s confirmation testimony. When asked whether after Heller it is now a matter of settled law that the Second Amendment secures an individual right to own a gun. Her answer was clear and direct: "Yes, sir." But once she was seated on the Supreme Court, Sotomayor did a complete 180 degree turn from her sworn testimony.

An article on the BIGGOVERNMENT blog by Supreme Court reporter Ken Klukowski concerning the McDonald decision notes Sotomayor’s gun rights deception during her confirmation hearings:
　
In the 2008 case D.C. v. Heller, the Supreme Court held 5−4 that the Second Amendment secures an individual right to own a gun. But because the Bill of Rights only applies directly to federal laws (such as those in D.C.), Heller only made the Second Amendment a right against the federal government.
　
On June 28 of this year in McDonald v. Chicago, a new 5−4 Supreme Court decision held that the individual right to own a gun from Heller is a fundamental right, and as such extends through the Fourteenth Amendment as a right against state and local governments as well.
　
Justice Stephen Breyer wrote a dissent that Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sonia Sotomayor joined in full. (Justice John Paul Stevens wrote a separate dissent.) That dissent contains a telling revelation about Barack Obama’s Supreme Court.
　
When Sotomayor was nominated for the High Court last year, she was asked by Judiciary Committee Chairman Pat Leahy (D−VT) whether after Heller it is now a matter of settled law that the Second Amendment secures an individual right to own a gun. Her answer was clear and direct: "Yes, sir."
　
Yet Monday, Justice Sotomayor joined in full the following statement: "I can find nothing in the Second Amendment’s text, history, or underlying rationale … to protect the keeping and bearing arms for private self-defense purposes."
　
The dissent went on to argue that the Court should "reconsider" the Heller decision, meaning that the Court should overrule Heller’s holding that the Second Amendment applies to American citizens.
　
This is completely consistent with Sonia Sotomayor’s record as a Second Circuit judge, where she repeatedly ruled against gun rights. She argued that the Second Amendment does not apply to individuals, does not apply to states, and that any gun-control law should be upheld if it’s rational. (She then added that because guns are deadly, any law restricting them is rational. Hence, all gun-control laws are automatically constitutional, even complete bans.)