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James Woods Just Dug up the Best 2nd Amend. Opinion Judge Ever Wrote

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Talk about perfect timing.

In an era when mobs of liberals gather in the nation’s capital to try to do away with American rights, and a retired Supreme Court justice openly calls for the repeal of the Constitution’s Second Amendment, conservative actor James Woods has unearthed one of the best legal opinions on the amendment ever penned.

And it came from the most liberal court of appeals district in the country.

For liberals, former 9th District Circuit Court Judge Alex Kozinski is probably only remembered for the fact that he left the bench under a cloud last year, accused of sexual misconduct by numerous women.

But the now-67-year-old Reagan appointee had a long career in the judiciary, even serving as chief justice of the 9th District.

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That can’t have been easy for a rational man. The district court’s decisions are overturned so often it’s been called the “nutty ninth,” and the line Woods unearthed came from an opinion Kozinski wrote in a dissent from a 9th District ruling in 2003.

In it, Kozinski appeared to draw on his own family history as the son of two Jewish Holocaust survivors. Born in 1950, he spent the first 12 years of his life behind the Iron Curtain in the communist-ruled country of Romania.

A man from a family who had relatives destroyed by Nazism and spent his childhood years in a communist dictatorship knows better than most Americans what the untrammeled power of the government can do to individuals who are stripped of their own defense.

And that knowledge came through eloquently in Kozinski’s dissent. Check out Woods’ Twitter post:

Kozinski’s line is one every American should remember: “However improbable these contingencies may seem today, facing them unprepared is a mistake a free people get to make only once.”

It’s brilliant in its simple eloquence, and Americans need only look around the world today to see the truth of the matter. As an Italian woman posted on Twitter just this week: “Last century our governments disarmed us. Now, in Germany & the UK they arrest you for Twitter and Facebook posts.”

Besides its common-sense and historical applications, Kozinski’s dissent proved prescient.

The ruling Kozinski was dissenting from held that the Second Amendment did not include an individual right to bear arms. The Supreme Court refused to review it at the time.

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However, the Supreme Court heard another case in 2008, and issued the landmark Heller v. District of Columbia decision, where the late Justice Antonin Scalia wrote the majority decision that, as The Washington Post wrote at the time, established “for the first time in the nation’s history that the Second Amendment guarantees an individual’s right to own a gun for self-defense.”

That overturned the 9th Circuit’s decision from 2003, proving the essential soundness of Kozinski’s argument.

In the hysteria liberals have whipped up in the aftermath of the February mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas in Parkland, Florida, it’s absolutely vital to remember the Second Amendment, and specifically the fact that the Supreme Court has affirmed it guarantees the individual right to bear arms.

And it’s just as important to remember Kozinski’s warning about what can happen when a free people make the mistake of giving up their arms.

Woods’ timing could not have been better.

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Joe has spent more than 30 years as a reporter, copy editor and metro desk editor in newsrooms in Pennsylvania, West Virginia and Florida. He's been with Liftable Media since 2015.
Joe has spent more than 30 years as a reporter, copy editor and metro editor in newsrooms in Pennsylvania, West Virginia and Florida. He's been with Liftable Media since 2015. Largely a product of Catholic schools, who discovered Ayn Rand in college, Joe is a lifelong newspaperman who learned enough about the trade to be skeptical of every word ever written. He was also lucky enough to have a job that didn't need a printing press to do it.
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