(UnitedHeadlines.com) – Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor is facing backlash after two armed U.S. Marshals on her protection detail shot a would-be carjacker in self-defense.
On July 5, Kentrell Flowers, 18, was shot after he pointed a gun at one of the Marshals through the driver-side window of an unmarked vehicle parked near Sotomayor’s home in an attempt to carjack the U.S. Marshal. He was arrested and facing charges of carrying a pistol without a license, armed carjacking, and having a large-capacity ammunition feeding device.
Sotomayor, nominated to the Supreme Court by former President Barack Obama, is facing backlash due to her position on the Second Amendment in cases that have come before the Supreme Court, including her co-signing a dissent in the 2010 case McDonald v. Chicago. While the majority ruled that the Second Amendment guarantees that an individual has the right to own a gun, then-Justice Steven Breyer wrote the dissent, stating the Constitution does not include “a private right of armed self-defense.”
She joined an opinion with the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals in 2009 that ruled Second Amendment rights do not apply to the states. She also wrote the dissenting opinion in the 2024 decision that found a ban on the firearm accessory, bump stocks, was unconstitutional.
Gun Owners of America senior vice president Erich Pratt noted that, over the years, she has “aggressively opposed the individual right to self-defense.” Pratt called the use of force by her private detail “incredibly ironic, even hypocritical.”
Many others took to social media to criticize Sotomayor for her opinions about private citizens owning guns.
On Twitter, Ryan Petty, whose daughter was killed in the 2018 Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting, called the incident “Defensive gun use.”
Another user, Parker Thayer, pointed out that the armed guards protecting Sotomayor were using the “same guns” that she claims “civilians do not need and should not own.”
Copyright 2024, UnitedHeadlines.com
