During a hearing before the Senate, President Biden’s judicial nominee for the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals, Judge Nancy Maldonado, a district judge for the North District of Illinois, got raked over the coals by Sen. John Kennedy of Louisiana. Particularly, Sen. Kennedy called out her attacks on so-called assault weapons and, in questioning her, showed her ignorance on the matter.
As background, many RINOs and anti-gun politicians on the left support banning “assault weapons,” a vague term in their use. An “assault rifle” is a military term for an intermediate-caliber (between full rifle power and pistol caliber), select-fire rifle. An assault weapon, in typical parlance, is broadly defined but is typically meant to mean a semi-automatic rifle with some military-style features, such as a pistol grip, detachable magazine, or bayonet lug.
However, few in support of banning “assault weapons” can articulate what they mean by the term, much less why such firearms are not protected by the Second Amendment. Such is what Sen. Kennedy showed when pressing Judge Maldonado on the matter.
Asking her to define the term, one she had used when pressing for the ban of certain weapons, Sen. Kennedy said, during the hearing, “You said, ‘Assault weapons may be banned because they’re extraordinarily dangerous and are not appropriate for legitimate self-defense purposes.’ Tell me what you meant by ‘assault weapons’?”
Judge Maldonado, in response, declined to answer the question. Instead of defining what she meant by “assault weapons,” she claimed that she did not write the brief, was only local counsel in the case, and is not a “gun expert.”
However, she was still involved with the brief and used the term when pushing for a restriction of Americans’ Second Amendment rights. Sen. Kennedy was quick to use that against her, saying, “So you submitted a brief, an appellate brief, you signed it, and you don’t know what … and you said, ‘Abolish assault weapons,’ and you don’t know what you wanted them to abolish?”
Judge Maldonado struggled to answer that question as well. Attempting to put off the Senator, she said that she does not “remember the exact definition of assault weapons.” Continuing, she tried explaining away the brief and her lack of understanding of the terms used in it, telling Senator Kennedy, “I was not responsible for researching the content.”
Using that response against her, given that Biden is trying to put her on the appellate court, a major promotion, Sen. Kennedy asked her if, with such a record of submitting a brief she didn’t understand, she deserves to be promoted to the appellate court. In response, Judge Maldonado said, “Senator, I stand by my record.”
Watch Sen. Kennedy here:
Commenting on the judge’s responses on X (formerly Twitter), one person said, “Then how does she know they’re “extraordinarily dangerous and not appropriate for legitimate self-defense purposes” if she’s not an expert? I’d ask her too if she’s been to the border to see what’s coming across thanks to the Biden Administration? We are going to need a lot more than a firearm to protect ourselves from some of these people.”
Another, similarly minded commenter wrote, “‘I don’t know what it is, but I know I don’t like it.’ I get it. I totally felt the same way about vegetables when I was five. Most of us grow up and realize the thing we hated out of ignorance might actually be beneficial.”
Featured image credit: screengrab from the embedded video
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