By Rick Jones

I'd like to take a look at what this day might mean to some people...a day off with pay, just a day off, family, friends, cookouts, reunions or just a day to lounge and watch the fireworks. As for me, I think of our Constitution, our founding fathers, our Bill of Rights, our military men and women who are performing their duties to protect our freedom.

"FREEDOM." We say it often, exclaiming our rights by the Constitution and Bill of Rights, but is it really free? Daily, there are people who are ready, willing and able to chip away at our most basic freedoms as guaranteed by the First and Second Amendments to the Constitution, and it is these people who we must fight against. The one that is the most often spoken of, is the First Amendment...the right to free speech, the right to choose the way we want to worship, the right of free press, the right of peaceable assembly, and the right to petition the government for a redress of grievances. This freedom in the First Amendment is the main reason that our forefathers came to this country … to get away from a ruler who wouldn’t allow such freedoms. The First Amendment was of the utmost importance to our founding fathers, and that is the reason it is listed first!

With such freedoms now in place, how will you be able to protect them? It is with the Second Amendment that these freedoms are protected!

Joint Statement by Wayne LaPierre, NRA Executive Vice President & CEO,
and Chris Cox, Executive Director of NRA’s Institute for Legislative Action

There may be no vote a United States Senator casts that is more important than a vote to confirm a nominee to the U.S. Supreme Court. Now that the Court has clearly stated that the Second Amendment is a fundamental, individual right that applies to all law-abiding Americans, NRA members and gun owners expect a nominee to the Court to fully support, defend and preserve that freedom.

We have carefully examined the career, written documents and public statements of nominee Elena Kagan and have found nothing to indicate any support for the Second Amendment. On the contrary, the facts reveal a nominee who opposes Second Amendment rights and is clearly out of step with mainstream Americans.

Therefore, the NRA is strongly opposed to Kagan's confirmation to the Court.

In testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee, she refused to declare support for the Second Amendment, saying only that the matter was "settled law."

This was eerily similar to the scripted testimony of Justice Sonia Sotomayor last year, prior to her confirmation to the Court. When pressed on the Second Amendment then, Sotomayor also referred to the issue as "settled law."

But in the recently decided case of McDonald v. City of Chicago, Sotomayor ignored the "settled law" of the Heller decision and signed a dissenting opinion that declared, "I can find nothing in the Second Amendment's text, history, or underlying rationale that could warrant characterizing it as 'fundamental' insofar as it seeks to protect the keeping and bearing of arms for private self-defense purposes."

It has become obvious that "settled law" is the scripted code of an anti-gun nominee's confirmation effort. The NRA is not fooled. No member of the U.S. Senate should be either.