By Elliott Brack
Editor and Publisher, GwinnettForum
JUNE 28, 2022 | The two bomb blasts handed down by the U.S. Supreme Court last week may serve as a rallying cry to change our nation. It won’t be easy, and it won’t be quick.
When the court hands down verdicts that a majority of the people are not in step with, something eventually must give. We have little doubt that a majority of Americans, and especially women, think it should be an individual woman’s fundamental right to terminate a pregnancy.
Realize, too, that while America has a basic Second Amendment right to own a gun, we are not still living in the Wild West or in the 18th Century. The concept of “open carry” is abhorrent to most Americans, especially where a majority of Americans live now, in cities.
So with the court rulings, our nation must turn to another route to return these rights to the people, that is, through the ballot and the Congress. We see the day in the future when Congress will have a majority of members who will restore the right to abortion, as well as restrict the ability of citizens to openly carry a gun without a permit.
Realize that the campaign by zealots, fundamentalists, and Republicans took over 50 years to overturn Roe v Wade. Beginning with Ronald Reagan, the continual appointment of conservative judges to the courts finally swung the Supreme Court from its Warren-liberal stance to a decidedly conservative one, now at 6-3.
Yet when the country suffered the most exasperating president this country has ever seen, that of Donald Trump, by the timing of deaths of three Supreme Court judges, Trump got to appoint three of the current nine judges (Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, Barrett.)
Three other conservatives were appointed by Republican Presidents George H.W. Bush (Savannah’s Clarence Thomas); and George W. Bush (Roberts and Alito).
The court’s three liberal judges were appointed by Democrats Bill Clinton (Breyer); and Barack Obama (Kagan and Sotomayor.)
As an aside, we must not forget another element for the current court: someone who was not appointed. The Republican Senate leader, Kentucky’s Mitch McConnell, blocked the appointment of Merrick Garland while Barack Obama was president. Without Neal Gorsuch on the court, the current conservative stance might be different, at one less, 5-4.
Wasn’t it interesting that at the day the Supreme Court banned abortions, that same day Congress passed, for the first time in 30 years, a bipartisan gun control bill? Doesn’t that say something about the Court ruling being out of step with not only the people, but their Congressional representatives?
This new gun legislation, coming too at a time when there are too many major shootings in our nation, sprang out of the concerns of a majority of Americans about these random, irrational and costly shootings. Yet the Supreme Court saw gun matters in a different light!
Yes, we have three branches of government. When one of these branches oversteps common sense, the other branches must step in. That’s what’s happening in the Congressional hearings of a crazed president who tried to overturn an election. Congress is slowly doing its job in holding these hearings, and understanding the January 6 insurrection.
And now another branch, the Supreme Court, has disregarded the people and turned a basic woman’s right into an arcane ruling, plus the Court also swept reasonable gun legislation aside. Both can be addressed by the Congress, and changed. It won’t be soon, but we feel confident the Congress will eventually move in those directions. Meanwhile, a majority of Americans will suffer in disagreement. Let’s hope that too many don’t die, too.
- Have a comment? Send to: elliott@brack.net
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