BELLEVUE, WA – The Second Amendment Foundation and its sister organization, the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms, said this year’s “Bill of Rights Day” observance Thursday, Dec. 15 will have a special significance thanks to this year’s U.S. Supreme Court decision strengthening the Second Amendment.
“For more than 200 years, our nation has been a bastion of liberty thanks to our unique Bill of Rights,” said SAF founder and Executive Vice President Alan M. Gottlieb. “The first ten amendments to our constitution protect individual rights—including the right to keep and bear arms—from government overreach and infringement. That is the way the Founders designed it, and that is the way it must always remain.
“We are especially gratified the Supreme Court reminded the nation in June that law-abiding citizens don’t need to provide a ‘good cause’ to exercise the right to bear arms,” said Gottlieb, who also chairs the Citizens Committee. “Rights are special. They stand apart from government-regulated privileges and no citizen needs to justify why he or she chooses to exercise a right. We should not be required to get a permit, nor should there be a prerequisite course of instruction before any citizen in this great nation can exercise a fundamental right.
“That’s why SAF and CCRKBA will remain vigilant and protective of those rights, which include the Second Amendment, regardless how others, including organizations and some politicians bankrolled by wealthy elitists, want to change that,” he stated.
“All rights are equal,” Gottlieb observed. “The rights of free speech, freedom of the press, due process, legal representation and personal privacy are sacrosanct, and so also is our right to keep and bear arms. That was made abundantly clear by Justice Clarence Thomas when he wrote, ‘We know of no other constitutional right that an individual may exercise only after demonstrating to government officers some special need. That is not how the First Amendment works when it comes to unpopular speech or the free exercise of religion. It is not how the Sixth Amendment works when it comes to a defendant’s right to confront the witnesses against him. And it is not how the Second Amendment works.’
“Throughout this nation’s history,” he added, “Americans have fought and often sacrificed their lives to defend our country, and its precious Bill of Rights. The principles of freedom and liberty are worth defending, and nowhere on this Earth of ours are those principles better defined than in the U.S. Constitution’s first ten amendments, which are known and envied around the world as our Bill of Rights.”