Obama continues to build anti-gun rights team: Nominates Eric Holder as AG

The nomination of Eric Holder for the post of attorney general of the United States sends an “alarming signal” to gun owners about how the Barack Obama administration will view individual gun rights, as affirmed this year by the Supreme Court, the Second Amendment Foundation said today.

“Eric Holder signed an amicus brief in the Heller case that supported the District of Columbia’s handgun ban, and also argued that the Second Amendment does not protect an individual right,” noted SAF founder Alan Gottlieb. “He has supported national handgun licensing and mandatory trigger locks. As deputy attorney general under Janet Reno, he lobbied Congress to pass legislation that would have curtailed legitimate gun shows.

“This is not the record of a man who will come to office as the nation’s top law enforcement officer with the rights and concerns of gun owners in mind,” he observed.

Holder’s nomination, like the appointment of anti-gun Illinois Congressman Rahm Emanuel as White House Chief of Staff, tells American gun owners that Obama’s campaign claims supporting the Second Amendment were “empty rhetoric,” Gottlieb stated.

“America’s 85 million gun owners have ample reason to be pessimistic about how their civil rights will fare under the Obama administration,” Gottlieb said. “Mr. Obama will have a Congress with an anti-gun Democrat majority leadership to push his gun control agenda. Gun owners have not forgotten Mr. Obama’s acknowledged opposition to concealed carry rights, nor his support for a ban on handgun ownership when he was running for the Illinois state senate.

“Barack Obama vigorously portrayed himself on the campaign trail as a man who supports gun ownership,” Gottlieb concluded, “but now that he has won the election, he is surrounding himself with people who are avowed gun prohibitionists. What better indication of what to expect from Barack Obama as president than the people he is selecting to lead his administration? This isn’t a roster of devoted public servants. It’s a rogue’s gallery of extremists who have labored to erase the Second Amendment from the Bill of Rights.”

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