[StBernard] Gun Owners of America Opposes AG Nominee

[Westley Annis]

	For Immediate Release
	
	Contact: Ed Isler or Ellie McDaniel
	
	(703) 321-8585
	
	January 16, 2009
	
	Gun Owners of America Opposes AG Nominee
	
	- - Group to Score Eric Holder Vote
	
	(Springfield, VA) -- Gun Owners of America is urging the U.S. Senate
	not to confirm Attorney General nominee Eric Holder. 
	
	GOA had been invited to submit testimony to testify, but ultimately
	the Committee chose not to allow a pro-Second Amendment organization
	to testify in person. 
	
	Below is GOA's written testimony prepared for the Eric Holder
	hearing. GOA also notified each Senator that it will score the vote
	on Holder (the only national gun rights group to do so) in the
	organization's 2010 Congressional
	 rating.
	
	
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	Testimony of John Velleco
	
	Director of Federal Affairs, Gun Owners of America
	
	Before the Committee on the Judiciary, United States Senate
	
	January 15, 2009
	
	Good morning Chairman Leahy, Ranking Member Specter, and members of
	the Committee.
	
	For nearly 35 years, Gun Owners of America has been dedicated to
	lobbying in favor of the Second Amendment right to keep and bear
	arms. On behalf of approximately 300,000 members across the country,
	I want to thank you for the opportunity to testify today on this
	important matter.
	
	Gun Owners of America believes that it would be a mistake for this
	body to confirm a nominee for U.S. Attorney General who would not
	have the trust and confidence of a significant number of Americans,
	particularly sportsmen and gun owners.
	
	Eric
	 Holder's record on gun rights issues is not obscure or
	insignificant. Both in his capacity as Deputy Attorney General from
	1997-2001 and as an attorney in private practice, Mr. Holder has
	taken positions on gun rights that are outside the mainstream of
	American thought and jurisprudence and, we would argue, at variance
	with some of the views articulated by President-elect Obama during
	the campaign.
	
	While serving as Deputy Attorney General, Eric Holder was active on
	several gun rights issues. In 1999, Mr. Holder supported legislation
	that would have limited handgun purchases to one per month,
	instituted a 3-day waiting period for handgun purchases, made it
	illegal for adults under the age of 21 to possess a handgun,
	subjected licensed gun dealers to a host of new laws and gun show
	promoters to regulations so severe that gun shows would effectively
	have been banned.
	
	In a statement prior to an expected
	 vote on the bill, Mr. Holder
	urged the Congress not to cave in to "the special interests that
	value the cold hard steel of guns more than the lives of children,
	neighbors and police officers," and to pass the draconian gun
	control package. Nowhere in Mr. Holder's statement was any mention
	made of the hundreds of thousands of legitimate self-defense uses of
	firearms every year in America. 
	
	When the gun control legislation stalled in the Congress, Mr. Holder
	participated in an effort to circumvent the legislative branch and
	enact gun control regulations through what many considered to be
	legislation by extortion. 
	
	The Clinton Administration, through the Department of Housing and
	Urban Development (HUD), spearheaded a class action lawsuit using
	federally-funded housing authorities as plaintiffs. From the outset,
	it was clear that government officials were less interested in
	winning the lawsuit then
	 they were in getting firearms manufacturers
	to agree to specific regulations in a settlement. 
	
	Even the Washington Post, which editorialized in favor of
	congressional action on the gun control measure, was sharply
critical
	of the lawsuit led by HUD. On December 17, 1999, the Post editors
	wrote: "That Congress has not been willing to [pass the gun control
	bill] is no license for the administration to use the courts as an
	alternative policymaking vehicle." 
	
	Only one company settled with the government. At the ceremony for
the
	signing of the agreement, then-HUD Secretary Andrew Cuomo thanked
	"ur friends at the Department of Justice, Deputy Attorney
	General Eric Holder," among the list of government officials who
	aided the lawsuit. 
	
	In the private sector, Mr. Holder continued to be a vocal advocate
	for stricter gun control laws. 
	
	After the 9/11 terrorist attacks, in an op-ed in the
	 Washington Post,
	Mr. Holder stated that "Congress should also pass legislation that
	would give the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms a record of
	every firearm sale," in spite of laws in place that prohibit gun
	owner registration. Mr. Holder also pushed for greater restrictions
	on gun shows, even though the terrorists were armed with box cutters
	that could be purchased at any hardware store.
	
	Perhaps most disconcerting to Gun Owners of America is an action
	taken by Mr. Holder just last year. In an amicus brief before the
	Supreme Court in the District of Columbia v. Heller case, Mr. Holder
	and 12 other former Justice Department officials argued in favor of
	the gun ban in Washington D.C. The brief also took the position that
	the Second Amendment does not protect an individual right.
	
	President-elect Obama stated during the campaign that he believed
the
	Second Amendment protects an individual right.
	 According to a
	February, 2008, USA TODAY/Gallup poll and a June, 2008, Harris poll,
	the overwhelming majority of Americans believe that as well. 
	
	The academic world also is increasingly supportive of the individual
	rights interpretation of the Second Amendment. Sanford Levinson and
	Akhil Reed Amar (Yale), William Van Alstyne (Duke) and Laurence
Tribe
	(Harvard) are just a few notable examples of scholars who believe
that
	the Second Amendment protects an individual right. These views, of
	course, are in accord with what the Supreme Court eventually ruled
in
	Heller.
	
	Eric Holder apparently disagrees with the incoming president and the
	Supreme Court on a core Constitutional issue. Gun Owners of America
	believes that Mr. Holder should not, therefore, be entrusted with
the
	responsibility of enforcing and prosecuting federal laws that
regulate
	the possession, sale, and use of firearms.
	
	Thank you for the
	 opportunity to testify on this important matter. 
	
	
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	John Velleco is Director of Federal Affairs for Gun Owners of
	America, a national gun lobby with over 300,000 members.