By Walid Shoebat
Out of all of the Supreme Court Justices, one of the few righteous ones is Clarence Thomas. He again brought up a true statement against the Supreme Court when it refused to hear a challenge against California’s ten day waiting period to purchase a firearm. He said that the Supreme Court would have no issue in challenging a ten day waiting period for abortion, because it favors abortion over the Second Amendment. According to one report from the Washington Examiner:
Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas criticized the high court after the justices denied a petition to hear a case challenging a California law requiring a 10-day waiting period for gun sales, saying the Second Amendment is a “disfavored right” and the Supreme Court’s “constitutional orphan.”
The case challenged the constitutionality of California’s “cooling-off period,” which requires gun purchasers wait 10 days before they can bring their firearm home. The waiting period applies to those who already have a concealed-carry license in the state and who have firearms registered.
On Tuesday, the U.S. Supreme Court denied a petition from plantiffs Jeff Silvester and Brandon Combs to hear the case.
Thomas said in his dissent he would have allowed the high court to take up the case, and said the decision from the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals is “symptomatic of the lower courts’ general failure to afford the Second Amendment the respect due an enumerated constitutional right.”
“If a lower court treated another right so cavalierly,” Thomas wrote in his dissent, “I have little doubt that this Court would intervene. But as evidenced by our continued inaction in this area, the Second Amendment is a disfavored right in this Court.”
The district court ruled in favor of Silvester and Combs, two lawful California gun owners who, along with two nonprofits, challenged the law. But the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals reversed the lower court’s ruling.
Thomas went on to note that the appeals court’s “deviation from ordinary principles of law is unfortunate, though not surprising,” and said he has observed a trend among the lower courts to resist the Supreme Court’s decision in the cases Heller v. District of Columbia and McDonald v. City of Chicago.
The justice said that in resisting the high court’s decisions in each of those cases, the lower courts are “failing to protect the Second Amendment to the same extent that they protect other constitutional rights.”
“In the Ninth Circuit, it seems, rights that have no basis in the Constitution receive greater protection than the Second Amendment, which is enumerated in our text,” Thomas wrote.
Thomas went on to note that the high court hasn’t heard a Second Amendment case in eight years, but has agreed to consider a number of cases involving the First Amendment and Fourth Amendment this term.
The justice said he believed four members of the court would have agreed to consider cases involving a 10-day waiting period for abortions, a 10-day waiting period for the publication of racist speech, and a 10-minute delay of a traffic stop.
“The Court would take these cases because abortion, speech, and the Fourth Amendment are three of its favored rights,” Thomas wrote. “The right to keep and bear arms is apparently this Court’s constitutional orphan. And the lower courts seem to have gotten the message.”