Justice Clarence Thomas on Second Amendment: ‘We Want to Pretend It Doesn’t Exist’

During an interview with the Heritage Foundation’s Center for Legal and Judicial Studies director John Malcolm, Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas pointed out that jurists tend to act like the Second Amendment “doesn’t exist.”

A CSPAN 2 video of the Clarence Thomas interview shows Malcolm saying:

You’ve talked a little bit about privileges or immunities; you’ve made some statements about substantive due process. So when you look at different clauses in terms of protecting personal liberties, economic liberties, which clauses do you sort of gravitate to – due process clause, equal protection clause, privileges or immunities clause or what other provisions?

Thomas responded, “Whatever is in the constitution. It’s all there. The Bill of Attainders is there. The Third Amendment is there — that we skip over. The Second Amendment, we want to pretend [it] doesn’t exist.”

WATCH:

Thomas continued:

The First Amendment has “Congress shall make no law respecting the establishment of religion” — What is the establishment of religion? It doesn’t say — it doesn’t have — “wall of separation,” it has establishment of religion. So you go back to the language, what does it mean? We are obligated to do that. We are absolutely obligated.

He said the refusal to go back to the language and seek original meaning births opportunity for jurist’s “theories” to “spin off in a totally different direction from the limitations built into the constitution itself.”

AWR Hawkins is the Second Amendment columnist for Breitbart News and host of “Bullets with AWR Hawkins,” a Breitbart News podcast. He is also the political analyst for Armed American Radio. Follow him on Twitter: @AWRHawkins. Reach him directly at awrhawkins@breitbart.com.