by CARRIE SEVERINO<\/p>\n
As the White House prepares to choose a nominee for the Supreme Court, they are continuing to suggest that they might nominate a supposed \u201cmoderate.\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n But Garland has a long record, and, among other things, it leads to the conclusion that he would vote to reverse one of Justice Scalia\u2019s most important opinions,\u00a0D.C. vs. Heller, which affirmed that the Second Amendment confers an individual right to keep and bear arms.<\/p>\n Back in 2007, Judge Garland voted to undo a D.C. Circuit court decision striking down one of the most restrictive gun laws in the nation. \u00a0The liberal District of Columbia government had passed a ban on individual handgun possession, which even prohibited guns kept in one\u2019s own house for self-defense. A three-judge panel struck down the ban, but Judge Garland wanted to reconsider that ruling. He voted with Judge David Tatel, one of the most liberal judges on that court. As Dave Kopel observed at the time<\/a>, the \u201c[t]he Tatel and Garland votes were no surprise, since they had earlier signaled their strong hostility to gun owner rights\u201d in a previous case. Had Garland and Tatel won that vote, there\u2019s a good chance that the Supreme Court wouldn\u2019t have had a chance to protect the individual right to bear arms for several more years.<\/p>\n Moreover, in the case mentioned earlier, Garland voted with Tatel to uphold an illegal Clinton-era regulation that created an improvised gun registration requirement. Congress prohibited federal gun registration mandates back in 1968, but as Kopel explained, the Clinton Administration had been \u201cretaining for six months the records of lawful gun buyers from the National Instant Check System.\u201d By storing these records, the federal government was creating an informal gun registry that\u00a0violated the 1968 law. Worse still, the Clinton program even violated the 1994 law that had created the NICS system in the first place. Congress directly forbade the government from retaining background check records for law abiding citizens.<\/p>\n Garland thought all of these regulations were legal, which tells us two things. First, it tells us that he has a very liberal view of gun rights, since he apparently wanted to undo a key court victory protecting them. Second, it tells us that he\u2019s willing to uphold executive actions that violate the rights of gun owners. \u00a0That\u2019s not so moderate, is it?<\/p>\n