The first responsibility of the President, sworn in his oath of office, is to uphold and defend the Constitution of the Unites States. That Constitution includes the Second Amendment. On June 26, 2008, the United States Supreme Court confirmed in DC v. Heller that the inalienable right recognized — not granted, *recognized* — in the Second Amendment is an enumerated individual Constitutional right. In the wake of that ruling, President-elect Barack Obama publicly declared his support for the Second Amendment, and during the course of his campaign promised to uphold the Constitutional rights of law-abiding gun owners.
The Supreme Court had already previously ruled, in US v. Miller, that not only does the Second Amendment apply to arms of miltary utility, it applies *specifically and explicitly* to such arms. I am therefore extremely disappointed to find that, less than 72 hours after winning the election, President-Elect Obama's change.org website contains a declaration of his intent to resurrect the ill-conceived, expired Federal "assault weapons" ban and make it permanent, banning exactly the kind of weapons which the Supreme Court has ruled that the Second Amendment most specifically protects.
Are we to assume that President Barack Obama intends to hold the rest of the Constitution in similar complete cavalier disregard during his term in office? If so, it promises to be a grim four years.
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