Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett has continued to hold her own against senators and their grueling interrogations.
But just in case you were looking for another reason to love her she told Senator Dick Durbin that she holds the Second Amendment to be an “individual” right when questioned on her stance on voting rights regarding the Kanter case.
From Breitbart:
The Kanter case was brought by a non-violent felon, Rickey Kanter, who fought “felon dispossession statutes” on grounds that he thought he ought not be prohibited from exercising his Second Amendment rights after paying fines and serving a year in prison for a mail fraud scheme.
The United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit rejected Kanter’s contention, but Barrett dissented.
A careful reading of Barrett’s dissent shows her rejection of the collectivist view of the Second Amendment, which holds that the right to keep and bear arms is a “civic right” tied to militia service for the common good. Rather, she sides with the majority in District of Columbia v. Heller (2008), holding that Second Amendment rights are individual in nature and individually possessed: “Heller, however, expressly rejects the argument that the Second Amendment protects a purely civic right. … It squarely holds that ‘the Second Amendment confer[s] an individual right to keep and bear arms,’ Heller, 554 U.S. at 595, and it emphasizes that the Second Amendment is rooted in the individual’s right to defend himself — not in his right to serve in a well-regulated militia.”
“The Second Amendment confers an individual right,” Barrett answered carefully, “intimately connected with the natural right of self-defense, and not limited to civic participation (i.e., militia service).”
