BELLEVUE, Wash., Aug. 27 LAWFUEL – The Legal Newswire — With the announced resignation of Attorney General Alberto Gonzales today, the Second Amendment Foundation is urging President Bush to make a very careful search for his replacement.
“We’re hoping that the next attorney general will be like the
president’s first attorney general, John Ashcroft, someone who understands
the Second Amendment affirms and protects an individual civil right,” said SAF founder Alan Gottlieb. “The next attorney general must also understand
that people do not leave their Second Amendment right, or their right of
self-defense, at the boundary of a college campus, the doorway of any
public building, the gateway of a national park, the border of any state or any city limit.”
Gonzales took heat earlier this year when he dismissed the notion of
armed self-defense against campus killers by allowing licensed students and
instructors to carry guns on campus. He also angered gun rights activists
by supporting S. 1237, the so-called “Denying Firearms and Explosives to
Dangerous Terrorists Act of 2007,” that would give the Attorney General
discretionary authority to deny the purchase of a firearm or the issuance
of a firearm license or permit because of some vague suspicion that an
American citizen may be up to no good.
“We called upon General Gonzales to resign after publicly supporting S. 1237,” Gottlieb recalled. “No attorney general should have the kind of
power he was seeking with this legislation.
“General Gonzales opposed legal concealed carry on college campuses,
despite evidence that so-called ‘gun-free zones’ are risk-free environments
for madmen like Sueng-Hui Cho, the perpetrator of the Virginia Tech
massacre,” he added. “Yet Gonzales admitted days after the attack that
neither the government, police nor campus authorities can guarantee
complete security.
“We hope the next attorney general is not afraid to admit that civil
rights apply to individual citizens, not state governments,” Gottlieb
concluded, “and that constitutional rights and freedoms, and the right of
self-defense, apply to every square foot of American soil. Such rights
should not be subject to the whims of university or government bureaucrats, and a citizen’s right to keep and bear arms should never be subject to suspension merely on suspicion of what someone ‘might’ do.”
The Second Amendment Foundation (http://www.saf.org) is the nation’s
oldest and largest tax-exempt education, research, publishing and legal
action group focusing on the Constitutional right and heritage to privately own and possess firearms. Founded in 1974, The Foundation has grown to more than 600,000 members and supporters and conducts many programs designed to better inform the public about the consequences of gun control.
