A right-wing gun nut just called for shooting all liberals if conservatives lose control of the Supreme Court.

During a radio interview with an official from the right-wing American Civil Rights Union on his Gun Owners News Hour, Gun Owners of America executive director Larry Pratt declared that if Democrats win the election in November and tip the Supreme Court to the left conservatives should go to the “bullet box” to get their way if voting fails to get them the government they want.

“If a liberal Democrat is elected president, then there goes the Supreme Court, it could be two, three, four justices, and I think the Second Amendment would be in great peril if that happens,” Robert Knight claimed.

Pratt agreed, adding that conservatives will have to resort to gun violence to restore their version of “constitutional balance.”

“And at that point, we would have to come to an understanding, which we’ve been sort of taught, it’s been taught out of us, that the courts do not have the last word on what the Constitution is,” Pratt continued. “They decide particular cases, they don’t make law. Their decisions, unlike the Roe v. Wade usurpation, don’t extend to the whole of society, they’re not supposed to. And we may have to reassert that proper constitutional balance, and it may not be pretty. So, I’d much rather have an election where we solve this matter at the ballot box than have to resort to the bullet box.”

Here’s the audio via Right Wing Watch.

Once again, conservatives are threatening bloody violence if they don’t get their way while at the same time demonstrating their ignorance about the subject they are whining about.

Article III Section 2 of the Constitution says:

The judicial power shall extend to all cases, in law and equity, arising under this Constitution, the laws of the United States, and treaties made, or which shall be made, under their authority;–to all cases affecting ambassadors, other public ministers and consuls;–to all cases of admiralty and maritime jurisdiction;–to controversies to which the United States shall be a party;–to controversies between two or more states;–between a state and citizens of another state;–between citizens of different states;–between citizens of the same state claiming lands under grants of different states, and between a state, or the citizens thereof, and foreign states, citizens or subjects.

In all cases affecting ambassadors, other public ministers and consuls, and those in which a state shall be party, the Supreme Court shall have original jurisdiction.

In short, in Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court found that anti-abortion laws are unconstitutional because they violate a woman’s 14th Amendment right to due process and equal protection under the law, thereby striking down those laws and making abortion legal in the United States. The Supreme Court did not make laws, they interpreted anti-abortion laws to be incompatible with the Constitution, a decision that was originally cheered by conservative “Christian” organizations, by the way. Conservatives only made abortion an issue years later when they needed an issue to use for political gain.

Furthermore, the Supreme Court does get the final say on whether or not a law is constitutional. As Chief Justice John Marshall wrote in 1803 that “it is, emphatically, the province and duty of the judicial department, to say what the law is.” Most of the Founding Fathers were still alive when Marshall and the Supreme Court originated the concept of judicial review, and they not only didn’t have a problem with it, the Federalist Papers make it clear that judicial review had already been anticipated by them when the Constitution was being debated and drafted.

Basically, if conservatives want to change the way the Supreme Court makes rulings, they’ll have to do it via constitutional amendment instead of threatening to do it at gunpoint. And just to be clear, if a Democrat wins the presidential election they have every right to nominate any qualified individual they want to replace Antonin Scalia. Threatening a bloody coup only makes it clear that the FBI and Secret Service should be doing their job by putting people like Pratt in prison where they belong.

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