On Dec. 9, the U.S. Court of Appeals will hear arguments in the case of Nojay v. Cuomo. At stake is nothing less than whether the Second Amendment grants substantive gun rights to Americans or is meaningless and allows government total control over what firearms citizens may or may not possess.
On Jan. 15, 2013, New York passed the Secure Ammunition and Firearms Enforcement Act, commonly known as the SAFE Act. The SAFE Act is beyond question the most draconian gun control passed in the history of the United States – and a cornerstone of Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s stated plan to make New York “the progressive capital of the nation.”But the SAFE Act has – by design – implications far beyond the borders of New York. The law’s backers – an ultra-left-wing cabal that includes Cuomo, New York attorney general Eric Schneiderman, former New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg, New York assembly speaker Sheldon Silver, and State Senate majority leader Jeffrey Klein – know that if the law is upheld in the federal courts, it will be only a matter of time before the opportunity arises for Congress to pass similar legislation for the entire nation, effectively killing the Second Amendment forever.
The SAFE Act’s provisions are massive and breathtaking assaults on the Second Amendment.The law entirely bans the sale of all semi-automatic civilian copies of military rifles issued anywhere in the world within the past sixty years or so. (Actual military-issue rifles are almost always fully automatic machine guns, and were already totally banned.) The ban covers the most popular target and competition rifle in the country, the AR-15 (the civilian version of the military M-16). It also includes civilian copies of military rifles such as the M-14, AK-47, H&K G3, Steyr AUG, and FN-FAL, and numerous others.
But it gets even worse:
The SAFE Act also allows any doctor or nurse to declare a gun owner unfit to own a firearm; police are then required to confiscate all of that individual’s guns. (The doctor or nurse making the allegation of unfitness is explicitly shielded by the law from civil liability.)
There’s also a legal strategy to gut the Second Amendment:
The law’s backers are calling the bluff of gun owners in a very high-stakes gamble. They are attempting to force the hand of the Supreme Court to rule that all Americans have a constitutional right to an AK-47 and a 30-round magazine, and they are confident that a court dominated by justices from liberal states with the strictest gun control laws in the country will vote “no.”
Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Elena Kagan, and Sonia Sotomayor are all ultra-liberals from New York City, and Stephen Breyer and Anthony Kennedy are from liberal Northern California. That could be five votes right there.Only one justice – Samuel Alito – has any military experience and any personal familiarity with the firearms in question. And Justice Scalia, a staunch advocate of the Second Amendment despite having grown up in New York, is getting on in years. If Scalia retires or passes on without ruling on the SAFE Act within the next two years, his replacement will be nominated by President Obama – and it’s curtains for the Second Amendment.
Source:http://www.americanthinker.com